


Black Mulberries

by heartslogos



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-04-16 12:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 30,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4626009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The black mulberry tree means "I shall not survive you."</p><p>A series of drabbles about the soul bonded Mahanon and Ellana Lavellan.</p><p>Here, in the land of shem who don't understand that his face is her face - they are the same and not, one soul in two bodies, he is the parts of me that didn't fit in <i>this</i> body and I am the parts of him that didn't fit in <i>that</i> body - they treat them separate and <i>different</i> and it's strange and discomfiting and not quite uncomfortable but <i>getting there</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You’re so, so, _so_ dumb, so stupid, did you think that I’d leave you for even a second, I’m never ever, _ever_ and I mean _ever_ letting you out of my sight, Mythal and Dread Wolf help you if you think you’re getting away with this – “

She doesn’t think he’s ever said so much to her at once – out loud – or spoken out loud this fast, this angry, this rushed, this incredibly frustrated ever in their combined lives. So she sits and waits it out because there’s worth in his words and in this experience even if her heart feels like it’s going to burst from her chest because he’s _here_. He came and he lived and he’s with her and she isn’t alone.

Relief, so much relief pours over her like waves because she had been fine with leaving him behind under the Keeper’s orders -

(“You will not make it to the Conclave if you do not leave now.” Keeper says -

“We aren’t supposed to be separated like this.” She protests because those are the rules. It’s alright if it’s for a little while, over a little distance. But this is far, into the realms of the shemlen, into the war zones they’ve been trying to very hard to avoid. And because they are a single heartbeat. She rubs one of the feathers Mahanon uses for his hair between her fingers – he’d given up trying to take it back from her because he was running late and because she’d pretended not to know what he was talking about. He’d given her a look and a twitch that would have been a smile on anyone else’s face, pinched her nose and left and she waved goodbye until she couldn’t feel him anymore.

“Sometimes one must break the rules of tradition in order to survive.” Keeper says, touching her cheek. Mahanon wasn’t supposed to be going hunting, either. Their vallaslin is too new, too fresh. They’re supposed to wait.

So many traditions breaking, too fast to even consider the weight of.

“I will explain it to him. Go. Andruil guide you and Mythal protect you. May the Dread Wolf erase your tracks.”

And she had run into the dawn.)

And then the day before she entered the Conclave a note from a tired falcon saying Mahanon had gone after her. Waking up in the prison cells of the Chantry – every Dalish elf’s worst nightmare coming true – and Cassandra Pentaghast saying _everyone died but you_ and the bodies and the voices and the demons and _Mahanon ma’elgar’vhen where are you?_

But he’s here and he’s alive and he’s yelling at her and he’s never ever yelled at her before and her heart is going to break in her chest, it’s too much.

“Elgar’vhen.” She breathes and Mahanon pauses, mouth still open and face red and his eyes beautiful and something inside of him breaks too – she feels it because they are one heart, forever and always, this life and the next and the next one after that until there is no such thing as life at all and even then, still, always – and he touches her face or she touches his and they are both holding each other and his forehead burns against her own and his voice trembles like the legs of a halla.

“Elgar’vhen.” He says and his hair feels gritty like ash in her fingers and she wants to cry because she loves him and he’s alive and he isn’t dead and she did not lose herself after all.

“If you ever do something so foolish again,” Mahanon says, “I will die.”

“If I ever do something so foolish again,” She says, “I will also, most likely, die.”

-

“Just try bringing me to the dance.” Mahanon says and she frowns hard, reaches out to yank his hair and he dodges her fingers.

“You said we’d never be apart again.” She whines, reaching for him even as he swats her hands away, ignoring her in favor of watching the game below them. She, personally, thinks Sera is going to win this game but for reasons unknown to her Mahanon seems to think that Grim has the upper hand. Which is silly because she’s always been the better gambler between them.

“I’ll wait for you outside.” Mahanon replies, like it’s that easy.

“But I want you inside with me. Where all the danger is.”

“The Inquisitor mingles, her shadow doesn’t.” Mahanon says and she can _feel_ how smug he is. She doesn’t know why the others keep telling her about how polite and nice and mature Mahanon is and asking her why she isn’t more like him.

 _He’s awful_. And he knows it and just because someone is quiet and doesn’t say much in front of other’s doesn’t mean that person is automatically mature and mysterious.

Well – Grim is both mature and mysterious but that’s a different story altogether.

He isn’t Mahanon and Solas only laughs at her when she complains to him about it, except he doesn’t laugh he just gives her the same look all the hahren back in the clans gave her whenever she complained about other girls fawning over Mahanon in front of her.

 _He’s not that great_.

“You aren’t my shadow.” She mumbles.

“Shems don’t understand the difference.” He shrugs, then clicks his tongue when Sera bursts into laugher and pulls the gold pieces across the table to her pile of winnings. She allows herself a quick smile before she returns to needling him.

“ _Please_.” She says and yanks at one of his braids. “I’d be the only Dalish in the building. I don’t – you know how they look at me.”

Mahanon pinches the bridge of his nose, scowl turning into something fierce before he sighs and catches her hand, tangling their fingers together.

“Fine.” He squeezes her fingers and she squeezes back. Then together they get up and crawl over the rafters to leave before someone goes looking for them. She was supposed to be sleeping hours ago in preparation for an expedition to the Exalted Plains early tomorrow morning.

She pulls at the back of his tunic as they creep through shadows and half cleaned rooms. _Come with me tomorrow_.

He squeezes her fingers. _No_.

Both of them are breaking all the laws of the Elgar’vhen – they’re never together anymore, it feels like. They’re always apart.

“I need you more.” She whispers. And he flashes her a look over his shoulder as they hop over roof tops to get as close to the main hall as possible before dropping to ground level.

“This Inquisition will never convince the clans if they keep sending city elves and shems. Your Inquisition needs the both of us.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Try telling that to the rest of the world.”

-

Apart, Bull thinks, they’re simple to read.

The boy is closed, sharp, calculating. He’s watching and waiting and he’s thinking steps ahead. He’s weighing pros and cons and he’s always looking over his shoulder. Overt. He isn’t hostile and he doesn’t hate them. It’s not even that he doesn’t trust them. It’s just that he’s cautious and that’s the way he grew. He’s quiet. A nudge, a shadow, a flicker of light, an adjustment of something a bit to the left or the right. Just enough to put you off but not enough for you to know. The kind of unnerving that Bull will never have because he’s just too damned loud.

The girl is open, trusting, and bubbling. She’s a fountain of never ending questions that spill and crash together and turn your head around. She’s _why_ and _what for_ and _when_ and _how come_ and quicksand. If you let her go at you too long you find yourself stuck with no way out. She’s clever and quick but she’s moving, moving, moving. Twisting, contorting, throwing knots into things and tangling you up in your own thoughts that are actually hers. Manipulative in the kind of way Bull can really, really appreciate.

Apart they’re simple. Alarmingly simple. That’s what tips him off. Because the first time he sees her – talks to her, this Herald of Andraste – on the Storm Coast there’s nothing to her.

He looks at her and she’s just this kid in armor that she’s not really comfortable in yet and a glowing hand. The only thing that actually screams _her_ is the staff and it looks like its seen better days.

The girl is so very, very careful when she talks. Like she’s rehearsed or something. And when she fights she’s full of holes. And for a while there he was kind of reconsidering the whole thing because she didn’t seem right. A good kid, probably from the way she asked questions and from the way she watched and listened to other people. But she didn’t seem _right_.

And then he saw _him_ and that one was quiet. Just this quiet bag of bone and flesh that was _there_. Just watching.

Then he saw them _together_ and he saw.

People have layers.

And apart, he’s just there – watching and quiet – and she’s just there – watching and questioning – but then you put them together and then they’re watching and learning and responding and analyzing in ways that – if Bull weren’t in a contract – would’ve made him scoop them up and sign them on and get the hell out of here.

They’re the kind of layers that Bull wants on his Chargers, the unpredictable kind that makes you piss your pants with the right kind of application.

And between the boy – sharp – and the girl – curved – they’ve got the application down.


	2. Chapter 2

She does not know a world without him, because he was already in the world – and waiting for her – when she was born.

In every lifetime, they promise, in every lifetime, I will wait and find you.

Mahanon is three years old when his family escapes their alienage and finds her clan and she is born one month later and no one knows except Mahanon and her but they are _vhen_. Elgar’vhen.

Her first word is his name – _Mahanon_  – and she grows up with his face in her face and her face in his face and she can’t imagine a world without him so when she learns that everyone at the Conclave died – and that Mahanon had followed her – she cannot imagine this world can be real because there is no world without Mahanon, if there is one, it isn’t hers.

Her hand is made to fit in his and his fingers are made to tangle with hers and even if there is no blood between them he is so much hers that she can only look at him and see her own reflection.

All of the Dalish are blood in some way – magic is precious and the old blood is precious and the clans have to grow and mingle somehow -

“Mahanon, Mahanon, Mahanon,” She says.

He tilts his head and continues to mend a hole in his tunic.

“Guess what I learned just now.” She says, taking the needle and thread from his hands because Mahanon is good with sewing leather and furs but he’s terrible with sewing cloth for some reason and this is why she’s the one in charge of the needle and thread even though she has a tendency to go crazy on embroidery.

“What?” He asks, and when they sit their limbs are knots and her arms move just as easily around his as they would with nothing there at all. Mahanon picks leaves and twigs out of her hair because she was sparring under the pine trees with Dalish and Skinner -

“Dalish is our cousin through her father’s mother’s sister and our mother’s sister’s mother’s sister.” She says. “We’re blood!”

Mahanon hums and he isn’t her blood but that doesn’t matter because he is still her face and she is still his face.

“You could at least pretend to be interested.” She mutters as she finishes the last knot, and he snaps forward to bite the thread.

“You’d know I was pretending and get more upset.” He shrugs, holding his arms out as she slips the tunic back over his head, pulling at his hair to get it out of the collar as he adjusts his sleeves. “So she’s blood.”

“It’s just fun to _know_.” She rolls her eyes. “Where’d the hole come from?”

“Dagger practice with Skinner.” Mahanon’s smile is a flash like lightning that lights up every memory she’s ever held close. “I’m going to beat her next time.”

“Sure.” She says, “I’ll ask for more thread just in case.”

-

“We’re going to get into trouble.” She says and Mahanon rolls his eyes.

“You want to ride one as much as I do.”

“I _do_ but what if they don’t like us?” She whispers, hand a little moist in his as they sneak out of their tent and towards the halla pen. “I don’t want all the halla hating us.”

“The halla don’t hate us.” Mahanon snorts, and can’t help the smile that spreads over his face when they get to the pen’s gate. “We’re old enough and they’ve been around us for years at this point. We’d know if they hated us.”

“Maybe they were being polite in front of the hahren.” Her fingers squeeze his and he turns to look at her. “Maybe they act different in the night.”

He looks at her face – his face – and she looks back at him flushed and wide eyed and he sighs.

“I won’t do it without you.” He says.

“You really want to do it.” She says.

He does, but if she really doesn’t want to, he won’t and that’s how they’ve always been. They never cross each other’s lines.

“Okay.” She says, “But it’s your fault if it goes wrong this time. The hahren always blame me for your tricks.”

“That’s because half the time my tricks are because of you! And I get blamed for your tricks all the time.”

He used to get mad about that – or so he’s told. He can’t remember a time where they weren’t blamed for each other’s actions because half of her actions are results of his and half of his are results of hers. They’re so tangled up together he can’t pick them apart.

Mahanon can’t imagine being annoyed or not wanting to be around his own face.

The halla watch them, quietly – and Mahanon is fairly sure they’re amused. These halla have been taking care of them since they were small and he can’t even count how many times a halla has scooped them up by the back of their clothes and trotted them to an elder for safety or punishment. – hold very still as they approach the new foals.

The foals wrinkle their noses and start to lip and mouth at her dress and she holds her hands up to her face to muffle her giggles and they both reach out to stroke their velvet noses.

“Someday,” She whispers. “I’m going to have a huge halla and we’ll ride through the forest and find all the best places to hunt and hide and forage.”

Mahanon refrains from pointing out that halla generally aren’t meant for riding so much as they are around for pulling the aravels and protecting the clan from danger.

“You mean a hart. Harts are bigger.” And louder. Mahanon rubs the velvety ear of one of the hallas between his fingers and gets a slit-eyed croon as the halla rests her head on his lap.

She hums.”Okay, a hart, then. Would you also get a hart? You wouldn’t be able to keep up on your feet.”

“We’ll see.” Mahanon isn’t very fond of riding and much prefers running and climbing on his own.

-

 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s amazing how much they’ve missed – lost, he supposes, is the proper word. Lost.

Over time, had taken from them, twisted, misconstrued. It’s lost.

She drinks it in like the clearest and coolest waters and he might not be a First or even a mage, but even he can appreciate all the things that their new – and to be honest, only – hahren is teaching them. Though Mahanon doesn’t really appreciate the _tone_ he’s taking.

He doesn’t know how she stands it. The way he just talks down at them – it’s not their fault they don’t know these things. It’s not their fault if they’re wrong. They’ve been taught wrong and they’re _trying_ so that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

In all his life he has never met someone so contradictory – irreverent towards tradition and so very strict about history, stern and mocking, wise and bitter, teaching and reluctant. The worst part is that she keeps making excuses for him -

Mahanon rolls his eyes when he thinks about it.

Oh, he must of have had a terrible experience with the Dalish, maybe he was a city elf who was turned away, maybe he was kicked out of a clan for a poor reason.

Leave it to her to be _forgiving_ of the man who talks at her like she’s a swaddled two year old when she’s a fully grown and marked First of a clan.

He glances up at her when he feels her eyes and raises an eyebrow.

She’s probably upset he’s not paying attention. It’s interesting, but not that interesting. She’ll be repeating whatever their new hahren says all night to him, anyway. She’d probably even make it sound more interesting. He’d still fall asleep on her, anyway, though.

Stories are all well and good to be respected and learned from, but sleep is something Mahanon needs if he’s going to go hunting at dawn and then scouting before noon.

But when he looks at her she just twitches her fingers and blinks at him and he tilts his head some more and then they both glance at their new hahren – who’s good enough with a bow that Mahanon is willing to call him hahren regardless of the way the man looks down his nose at them -

And it’s about time she got up to her mischief, he was waiting on her and he was starting to get worried she _wouldn’t_ do anything and then he’d be stuck having to _behave_ for this guy forever.

“Mahanon?” She says and he gives her his version of a smile and her eyes glitter at him.

“Hm?”

“Do you think the Dread Wolf _smelled_?”

This is their favorite game to play – with the hahren of the clan and of every clan and he’s very glad this tradition seems to be going on for their new one, too.

“Well I don’t see him taking baths very often.” He replies. She titters, and he adds on - “Couldn’t have been very respectful. Do you suppose he had bad breath as well?”

“Dread Wolves probably don’t chew mint or lemon rinds in between devouring the innocent and naive.” She sing-songs and he can see Solas twitch out of the corner of his eye.

“Dog breath?”

“Dog breath.” She agrees and their noses wrinkle in laughter and Solas looks as scandalized as he’s ever seen him.

“The Dread Wolf,” Solas says, primly closing the book he had borrowed from the apothecary – and it amazes Mahanon that there are _so many books_ in this small village that the humans even admit to be poorly supplied - “Did _not_ have dog breath.”

“But he was a dog.”

“And he breathed.”

“So he must have had dog breath.”

“And mangy fur.”

“Dirt and twigs and blood and guts.”

They’re starting to get a good twitch going on Solas’ temple.

She kicks her feet in the air, shooting Mahanon a grin that sparks from the fireplace and Mahanon taps his fingers on the dirt packed floor because she’s about to say something that’s going to make something _blow_ and he needs to keep a straight face for it.

“Do you suppose,” She says, looking him straight in the eye, “The Dread Wolf ever licked himself? Like dogs do?”

It takes everything Mahanon has not to burst into laughter right there because he might break his own ribs.

Solas looks like he’s going to crack their skulls.

“No.” Solas says. “The Dread Wolf did _not_.”

“How do you know, though?” Mahanon turns to him, hiding his mouth with his hand. “You weren’t there. I mean, you’re _old_ , but not _that_ old.”

“I just _do_.” Solas says. “Just because he was shaped as a wolf does not mean he thought as a wolf. And if you are done playing, there are still things to be done.”

“Yes, hahren.” She says, and he mumbles something in agreement.

Solas looks at them both before sighing and opening his book again.

Mahanon looks his elgar’vhen in the eye and she smiles.

Five minutes until round two. Start.

-

“Those children are going to drive someone insane one day.” Vivienne says.

“ _One_ day?” Dorian repeats, eyebrows raising. “Have you seen the Seeker recently? I dare say we’re already _there_. In fact, I do believe we’ve been at this _one day_ for quite a few weeks. Perhaps months. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t been here for all of it.”

“It was fine when there was just the one.” Josephine says, “Though I do like them both. This isn’t to say I don’t like them _both_. They’re just – very, very tricky when they’re together.”

“Calling them _tricky_ when they’re together is like calling the Chargers _perky_ when they’re on a job.” Dorian snorts. “Just use the word you want to use.”

“The word, darling, is _obnoxious_.” Vivienne says, stirring her tea, turning her finger to move the spoon. It’s a frivolous display of magic that Dorian counters by touching the side of his teacup to warm it until steam starts to gently rise.

Josephine rolls her eyes at the both of them.

It’s how they _bond_ , really.

“It’s not as if they’re bad children. They’re just _young_.”

“Bless you for defending them at every turn.” Dorian says. “I mean, one of them is my best friend but even I don’t make those kind of excuses for her.”

“I still don’t understand how you could become best friends with one and not the other.”

“They’re two people no matter how you look at it.” Dorian says. “And have you tried talking to him? I’m fairly sure he’s just _biding his time_.”

“He’s controlled. I like that.” Vivienne says. “Disciplined. Stoic. Very respectable.”

“I bet you wish he was the one with the mark instead.”

“No. It’s suitable that a woman is the Herald of Andraste, and it is extremely fortunate that woman is a mage.” Vivienne replies. “But I wouldn’t complain if the little dear were to take on some of her brother’s attributes.”

“She does. When it counts.” Josephine says. “You didn’t even suspect anything until you got to Haven.”

Dorian snickers, because this is very, _very_ true. He thinks she pretends she’s her twin whenever she goes out to meet potential allies. That stern snark and sarcasm is entirely her brother’s. Even the way she talks. She _modulates her voice_ to make it deeper. It’s adorable, really.

Vivienne sighs.

“Are we certain we can’t convince her brother to go out on more contact missions? He makes such a good impression.”

“If quietly plotting how to destroy you is your thing, he does.” Dorian mutters behind his teacup. Which is probably completely unfair to Mahanon, Dorian’s pretty sure Mahanon only plots Dorian’s destruction for stealing his sister’s attention.


	4. Chapter 4

They say that dwarves do not dream because there is no magic in them and that is _terrifying_. They cannot dream, they have no aura - even plants and the smallest of insects have an aura -, they cannot speak to spirits, and they can cast no spells.  
  
She cannot imagine a world without magic and even Mahanon - who isn't a mage like she is - can still feel the lingering traces of magic in the world.  
  
_Mahanon_ dreams.  
  
Mahanon is _hers_ , even. Perhaps it is because they are elgar'vhen, perhaps he just has more magic than normal non-mages, but Mahanon can sense magic, too. He can tell whenever she's about to play a trick and whenever someone is about to start casting. Maybe it's just Mahanon. Maybe it's just him being clever, but she doesn't think so because it's not _just_ Mahanon.  
  
She can't imagine not being able to dream.  
  
She can't imagine having no magic, no aura, at all. It scares her. They must have at least a _little_ aura.  
  
The night that they learn about dwarves, she curls around him and he curls around her and his hand is in her hair and her hand is in his hair and their faces are each other's faces. She presses their foreheads together and someday, perhaps, their vallaslin will touch here.  
  
(She knows and he knows and everyone knows what gods they will use to mark their faces because every elgar'vhen gets the same vallaslin, every single pair.)  
  
(It will touch.)  
  
If there were no magic in the world, she thinks - he thinks -, they would not have this.  
  
A bond deeper than time.  
  
"No durgen'len has this." She whispers, and he nods, foreheads rubbing together as they huddle close and try to keep their voices down. They always get scolded for talking late into the night and not actually sleeping and keeping the other da'len in their tent awake.  
  
They both shiver.  
  
Elgar'vhen are rare among the People but they happen.  
  
Humans have elgar'vhen sometimes. Not that the humans know it. It happens, though.  
  
But a people with no elgar'vhen at _all_?  
  
"We wouldn't exist." Mahanon says and she clings to him and he clings back because this is the best thing that ever could happen - he is the best thing, she is the best thing - and the idea of not having this is scary.  
  
She knows that not everyone is elgar'vhen and that they are lucky and strange and fortunate and rare and precious (they have brought the Lavellan clan so much prestige) but the concept of no elgar'vhen in the world at all -  
  
Mahanon finds her hand and squeezes it, she can feel the callouses he's getting with his new bow forming and maybe he can feel the callouses she's getting from learning how to use a staff for magic.  
  
"We'll never meet a dwarf, anyway." Mahanon says.  
  
"Right." She agrees.  
  
-  
  
"There's no shem word for it." She says, "How do we explain it to them? I don't want them to separate us."  
  
"Twins is close enough, isn't it?" Mahanon grumbles and she stares at him.  
  
"We look _nothing_ alike!"  
  
"To shem eyes we do! Ten people have already confused me for you!" Mahanon snaps, "Our hair isn't even the same color."  
  
"Not all shems are snow-blind and under exposed to elf faces!" She snorts. "You're older by three years!"  
  
"Not that they can tell." Mahanon raises an eyebrow. "Should I start wearing a sign that reads three years older than the one other tattooed elf in this village?"  
  
"If we say relatives," She says, because she doesn't think her heart could take being separated from him again, "Then they'll say, grand, now you go here and you go here. I don't want that. If we say twins, and by some miracle of Mythal and Sylaise they believe us, they'll maybe let us room together but otherwise keep me away doing their weird Chantry thing."  
  
Mahanon's teeth flash.  
  
"And we don't want _that_ either." She continues. "It's deeper than flesh. It's elgar'vhen. They have to understand how important you are. I need you with me. I can't think right if it's just _me_."  
  
"You can't think right _at all_." Mahanon says and she shoves him when he snickers. "Fine. Fine. But you said it yourself - there's no word for it in the shem languages. And elgar'vhen is rare among their people. Rarer than it is among _our_ people. Would they even understand it?"  
  
"Solas understood just by looking at us."  
  
"He's not a shem."  
  
"He's not Dalish, either."  
  
"I'm not asking him for help."  
  
"I know, which is why _I_ am."  
  
"I don't like him."  
  
"You don't like most people, ma'vhen." She touches his hair, pinches the end of the _her_ braid and he reaches out to wrap _his_ braid in her hair around his fingers, eyeing the feather she'd attached to the end of it.  
  
"You stole my feather again." Mahanon sighs.  
  
"What's yours is mine and what's mine is yours." She says, tugging. "And you stole my bear fang."

"Fine. We'll ask him for help. This isn't going to go well, you realize." Mahanon says, running his thumb over the edge of the feather. "Shems rarely take to being taught by elves well."  
  
"There's a first time for everything, isn't there?"  
  
-  
  
"I'm going to call her Poppy." Varric says, "Because the name is self-explanatory."  
  
"Poppy. I can see it." Bull hums. "She's got the pep."  
  
"And the daydreaming." Krem agrees. "And what about her brother?"  
  
"Torn between Nightshade and Wolfsbane." Varric says.  
  
"Both poisonous." Dalish says. "But pretty."  
  
"He's not that bad." Krem says, "You just don't like him because he told you that your books are trash to your face."  
  
"I like him. He's honest." Dalish says.  
  
"You like him because you think he's cute." Krem snorts. Dalish squawks. Bull turns to look at her.  
  
"He's a whole lot younger than you."  
  
"He's cute for a da'len." Dalish protests, turning to Krem. "Besides, _you_ think he's cute too."  
  
Krem shrugs. "Never said I _didn't_."  
  
"He's _way_ too young for you." Bull says.  
  
"And they're both practically infants compared to _you_." Krem says. "Anyway, Wolfsbane sounds intimidating."  
  
"Poppy and Wolfsbane doesn't really roll off the tongue though, does it?" Varric points out. "Also, he might hang me in my sleep."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous, she'd never let him _hang_ you." Dalish says. "She likes you so she'd make it a clean death."  
  
"That's not comforting."  
  
"Nowhere in my job description does it say I'm comforting."  
  
"You're terrible."  
  
"So what are the alternatives to Nightshade and Wolfsbane which are both names bigger than he is?" Bull says.  
  
"Seed." Varric says, looking Bull dead in the eye. "As in – _Poppy seed_."  
  
Dalish snorts and Krem coughs up his beer. Bull grins, slow and wide.  
  
"You're all terrible people." Dalish says.  
  
"He's quiet. Lurks in shadows, springs up when you aren't really expecting him. Takes his time." Varric says. "You need a lot of care to get through that shell of his."  
  
"You sound like you're describing a turtle."  
  
"Poppy seed." Varric repeats.  
  
"Well now that I've heard that everything else you tell me will be sub-par." Krem says. "And he's definitely going to try to hang you in your sleep. Want to bunk with Rocky and Grim? Stitches moved to the Chantry infirmary for the time being."  
  
"I might take you up on that offer."


	5. Chapter 5

Jealousy is something strange to them. They've never had to be jealous before. Because it was always just them and everyone else and there was no one who was ever between them because - _because_.  
  
So this is new, she thinks, miserably as she watches Mahanon smile at Krem - though she doesn't know if Krem knows that Mahanon is smiling, people think Mahanon is hard to read sometimes - and realistically she knows that Mahanon will always like her best, pick her because. _Because_.  
  
But this is _new_ , people have never come between them before.  
  
Everything has been shared between them. All their clothes, their tools, their weapons, their days, dreams, hurts, stories, lessons.  
  
Back with the clan, even people were shared. If someone was Mahanon's hunting companion they were hers, too. Mahanon's trainers were her trainers and her trainers taught Mahanon - even if he didn't have magic, he still shared some of her lessons - and even their punishments from the hahren were the same.  
  
Everyone in the clan were the same for both of them.  
  
But this - _this_ is _new_.  
  
Here, in the land of shem who don't understand that his face is her face - they are the same and not, one soul in two bodies, he is the parts of me that didn't fit in _this_ body and I am the parts of him that didn't fit in _that_ body - they treat them separate and _different_ and it's strange and discomfiting and not quite uncomfortable but _getting there._  
  
Krem treats her gently, kind of softly, a touch of respect because she has the mark on her hand, calls her "your worship" to make her laugh, calls her "Boss" to make her smile, and indulges all her questions. But he treats her gently, not quite friend, not quite acquaintance, somewhere quiet and in between like distant and new family.  
  
But he treats Mahanon different. Rougher. Closer. Friend. He calls Mahanon "brat" and ruffles his hair and jostles him and teases him and plays with him in ways he won't play with her. Familiar. And it makes her jealous because she knows Mahanon likes Krem, he likes most of the Chargers - they haven't met all of them quite yet, but she thinks that they will eventually, Haven isn't that big, surely they'll run into more? - and the Chargers like _him_.  
  
For the first time in their combined lives, people are treating them separate and it makes her feel odd and jealous because -  
  
She doesn't know why and it's strange and she wants to ask Mahanon _why_ because he's always been better at cutting through things than she is, seeing things and patterns and making them clear. He's been explaining things to her since she was born, he's very good at helping her understand her own head.  
  
(He is her head.)  
  
But she can't ask Mahanon about this because it's silly. Mahanon is hers and she knows that there's no way that anyone here will take him away from her and she's part of him so it's not like they like him more, because to like Mahanon is to like her and to like her is to like Mahanon except they _don't know that_ and this hurts her head.  
  
Mahanon is happy - or at least, as happy as he can be in an area full of rather religious shems with swords - and that's really what counts, she supposes, as she watches Mahanon from the top of Haven's walls.  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the Iron Bull staring at her staring at Mahanon smiling at Krem and she wonders if Bull can tell that Mahanon is smiling and then wonders if he can tell that -  
  
She ducks down behind the walls and slips down the ladder to go swing by the apothecary and see if he needs any more help.  
  
Leave it alone, she thinks, just let it alone.  
  
-  
  
"They're weird." Sera says, "Creepy kind of weird."  
  
"They're siblings." Varric says. "You know what those are, right?"  
  
"They're wrong for siblings. I've never seen siblings like that. It isn't right, besides, they don't even _look_ alike."  
  
"Look, they say they're siblings, they're siblings. Who are we to say what they are and aren't? You gonna go tell them they aren't?"  
  
"I'm just sayin' that they're off. Something about them isn't right." Sera snaps, "And I can't be the only one who thinks it. Just the only one who says it out loud."  
  
Varric looks at her with this flat expression that makes her shift her weight.  
  
"You heard their explanation. Is this about the magic, the elven lore, or what?"  
  
All of the above, Sera thinks.  
  
"There's no such thing as - their gods aren't real. So they can't be real. They're making it up. And if they weren't it's not right. It's weird and creepy."  
  
"To them it's real." Varric says.  
  
"To people possessed by demons their worlds are real too."  
  
"Look, I think that those two have been completely and astoundingly amazing at putting up with this for the past - oh how many months? Sera. Everyone here knows you're Andrastian. Everyone knows you don't really like magic and you don't like Dalish and you don't like anything having to do with elven roots. But those two? Those two are Dalish. There's magic between them. And they carry on traditions directly from said elven roots. They get you don't believe in any of it, so they've been - in my opinion - rather nicely avoiding saying anything to you about any of it. Give them the same courtesy about your own thoughts to yourself, would you? They - or at least, the girl - likes you. Wants to be your _friend_. Don't go picking at everything they are just because you can."  
  
-  
  
"Mahanon." She says and he turns to her and glares.  
  
"No."  
  
" _Mahanon_." She repeats, eyes _glittering_ and he's very well aware that there is a crowd forming to watch them and he hasn't slept well in about a fortnight because this stupid castle needs so much work done to make it hospitable and everyone always comes to bother them about decisions about the castle as if they know anything about building stone walls and roofs and interior decoration.  
  
Mahanon almost threw a dagger into the last messenger's eye - lucky for Mahanon and the messenger, he'd lost his dagger and his sister has dead asleep on top of him.  
  
Mahanon firmly ignores the - the clicking _thing_ with beady eyes and too many scales for something you're supposed to put a saddle on and focuses entirely on his elgar'vhen.  
  
"We have an entire stable full of harts." Beautiful, gorgeous, wonderfully crowned and pelted harts complete with traditional saddles that Mahanon had spent ages bartering for. "We have horses. We even have that - " He waves his hand in the direction of the furthest stable stall. "Whatever."  
  
"Bog unicorn."  
  
"Right. Bog _unicorn_." Mahanon jabs his finger in the direction of the latest addition. " _This_? Breathes _fire_."  
  
"Only a little bit of fire."  
  
Mahanon narrows his eyes.  
  
"Fire is fire. It burned off one of your braids."  
  
"I'm sure he didn't mean to and he's very sorry. Please? Mahanon? Please?"  
  
"No." Because if she rides it he has to ride it too and he's not going anywhere near that lizard.  
  
"But he's made friends with all the other mounts! We can't make him leave now!"  
  
Mahanon turns and all the harts in the stable are baring their teeth at the - _lizard_ thing. Mahanon's own stag looks ready to gore the thing against the stable wall. Mahanon quietly approves.  
  
If something like that wandered into his living quarters without his permission he'd attempt to kill it too.  
  
The horses whiney and roll their eyes and stamp their hooves.  
  
Mahanon closes his eyes and prays to Sylaise for patience and to not give him a headache.  
  
"No." Mahanon repeats.  
  
"But - "  
  
"You can keep it in the stable but you aren't riding the damn thing. Let the Bull ride it. It's as close as he'll ever get to owning his own dragon." Mahanon says and in the crowd he hears someone who sounds like Krem swear and Bull cheer.  
  
She lights up like a torch and lurches forward - his arms fly up automatically to catch her - and she presses her face against his, smiling like the complete and utter lunatic she is.  
  
"No more after this one." He says, he feels sorry for the stable master as it is.  
  
"No more." She promises and it's really the thought that counts. 


	6. Chapter 6

As children they are louder, and quieter at the same time. They cry a lot more, too.  
  
Their parents - the ones who brought Mahanon into this world - say that when they lived in the alienage Mahanon did not cry. They thought that their life there had drained the tears out of him, beaten it out of him. Starved it out of him.  
  
But then they ran away and they find the Lavellan clan. The mother who gave birth to Mahanon says that when they got there they were not sure they wanted to stay but Mahanon would cry and cry and _cry_ and fuss and when the mother who gave birth to Ellana went into labor Mahanon screamed and wailed and couldn't be quieted no matter what they did until Ellana came out screaming and crying, herself.  
  
The woman who gave birth to Mahanon says that she, too, had milk.  
  
(And she was frightened and the Keeper explained and she was still frightened but also in awe because she did not know if she believed in the gods who turned their backs on their people until then because she had never seen Mahanon look so _peaceful_.)  
  
Mahanon cries a lot more after Ellana is born, usually when Ellana is or is about to cry and no one can tell who causes the other to cry first.  
  
But aside from their shared crying, they are quiet. Mahanon will spend hours staring into Ellana's face - awake or asleep.  
  
Sometimes, the mother who gave birth to Ellana says, Mahanon would look at her when she came to take Ellana away with something in his eyes that made her skin feel raw. Something unsettling.  
  
(She finds herself loving him, protecting him, lecturing him, caring for him, feeding him, comforting him - like he is her son and he is.)  
  
They grow together. She is always with him and he is always with her, inseparable.  
  
As they grow older they only grow deeper into each other, even as they learn to be apart for longer than an hour or two.  
  
It is Ellana who hits her growth first, small breasts and a steady increase in height (not much, though, she is still _small_ ) and both the couple who gave birth to Mahanon and her speak to the Keeper about their separation. They are getting too old to be together all the time. Do they expect someone to marry and couple with them both? Mahanon should move to the boys aravels and Ellana to the girls'.  
  
They both grow red-blotchy in the face when they hear that because -  
  
I would never, Mahanon chokes out, knuckles white as he grips her hand.  
  
I won't ever, Ellana hisses through her teeth, nails digging into the back of Mahanon's hand.  
  
" _She_ is my face."  
  
" _He_ is my face."  
  
They both say because that is the only way they know how to make others who do not already know elgar'vhen understand.  
  
You are the other parts of me, they think to each other. Not my half. There is someone for our souls to love in the world, someone to match our edges. But they are our edges. We are the interlocking pieces of a wooden puzzle. Not the hands that solve it.  
  
Mahanon hits his growth soon after and it is growing pains and cracking voices and Ellana laughs but she digs her fingers into the muscles of his calves at night as he complains into his arms about everything under the sun.  
  
They start looking for suitors for Ellana and Mahanon both because there is a precious magic in them that can't be wasted.  
  
"I don't want to." Ellana says. Do you think whoever it is will understand that I am you and you are me and love you, too?  
  
"I know." Mahanon says. Do you think whoever it is will understand that I will always pick you first and it's not their fault it's just how we were made?  
  
"I love you." She says. Do you think they will love us enough not to separate us?  
  
"I love you." He says. Do you think they will try?  
  
"If I could, I'd choose you." Ellana says.  
  
"I would, too." Mahanon agrees.  
  
But no child could ever come from a coupling of elgar'vhen. One soul cannot produce a new soul.  
  
It takes two souls.  
  
Unless you are a god.  
  
They are not gods.  
  
-  
  
Ellana looks at him over the bucket of potatoes they are slowly peeling.  
  
"You don't like him." She says and Mahanon shrugs.  
  
"I don't like anyone."  
  
"You like the Chargers. You like Dorian, well enough."  
  
"I like to make him squawk like a plucked chicken." Mahanon corrects and Ellana snorts. "I don't like Dorian, as a person, yet."  
  
"Yet."  
  
"You like him, I _could_ grow to like him."  
  
Ellana hums. "But you still don't like _him_."  
  
"Which him?"  
  
"Cullen."  
  
Mahanon's mouth turns into a thin line.  
  
"I respect him."  
  
"But you don't _like_ him."  
  
"And you do?"  
  
"I don't know how to feel about him. He's polite."  
  
"He's a templar."  
  
"He left for this."  
  
"Which makes me think this might turn out to be _worse_." Mahanon's lips twist into a scowl. Ellana rests her foot on top of his and lowers her eyes back to their task. "You don't fear him?"  
  
"I fear _everyone_ , Mahanon." She replies. You know this.  
  
Mahanon sighs.  
  
"Not _enough_."  
  
Ellanna presses her foot down a little.  
  
"People grow and change."  
  
"Not that much, not that quickly."  
  
"No, but slowly. Over time. Yes." Ellana argues. "Forgive him."  
  
Mahanon's eyes snap up to look at her, mouth half open to argue.  
  
"Forgive him." She repeats, drawing on the strength she uses to yell in a fight. The strength of magic spells in voices and the Keeper she was supposed to become. "Forgive him."  
  
"How?" Mahanon asks after a few moments of silence. She continues to peel potatoes. His has dropped back into the bucket, ring of potato peel half curled around it. "You know what they've done."  
  
"And do you know what has been done to them?" She asks.  
  
"It doesn't justify what they've done!"  
  
"No. But you are a hunter, Mahanon. You know - you track and seek to understand your prey so that you can consider their actions. Do you get angry at a bear who lashes out after being attacked, even if they are attacked by accident? Do you rage against the wolf who shares their kin with Fen'Harel? Do you snarl and curse at the vulture that eats a carcass? There is a cause, there is an effect. You don't have to like or accept templars. But you should try to understand that they are capable of change, of being swayed. They can be led wrong and made to do terrible things, or they could be led properly and function as a proper force of good. Cullen is trying. He resents himself enough for the both of you."  
  
Mahanon picks the half peeled potato back up, contemplating before he resumes peeling.  
  
"I will _consider_ this." He says.  
  
She hums. "That's all I'm asking." 


	7. Chapter 7

She glances up at him when he slips in through the window. No one's caught either of them doing it yet but it's only a matter of time, really. She supposes that when someone does catch them that they're going to be yelled at quite loudly. Probably by Cassandra.  
  
Cassandra's nice. She cares in unexpected ways.  
  
Mahanon shrugs when she watches him from the floor.  
  
"No worse, no better than we thought." He says, sitting in front of her. She holds out her palm to him, and he drags his fingertips over her hand, pressing his fingertips against hers for a moment before folding his hands in his lap.  
  
"No Firsts?"  
  
"Seconds, a _lot_ of thirds. Some hunters, though."  
  
Ellana raises an eyebrow.  
  
"Not masters. Of course."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Some craftsmen and hearth keepers." Mahanon shrugs again.  
  
"But no masters." Ellana sighs.  
  
"We didn't expect there to be any." Mahanon reminds her. "Our people can't afford to be sending their masters away. The only reason _you_ got sent away was because you were the only choice. Our second was sick, and our third was too young, and the hunters wouldn't have understood the talk about magic as well. And you studied Ghilan'nain's craft."  
  
"It would be nice if they _did_ send masters, though." Ellana says.  
  
"You know they'll send them eventually." Mahanon says. "When it's all over."  
  
Their people did not survive this long by acting. The survived by waiting for the dust and rubble to settle. Their people have become quiet lurkers.  
  
"At least they sent their overflow." Mahanon says. "And supplies."  
  
"The harts are nice." Ellana agrees, sighing. "It would have been nice if they made that show of goodwill, though."  
  
"The shems don't even realize it _isn't_ goodwill." Mahanon snorts. "What do they know the difference between a First and a third? A master and a crafter? What do they even care to know? There's _us_. The Inquisition, at least, has us."  
  
"I suppose." Ellana says, "Anyone we know?"  
  
"Not really. But they know us." Mahanon says.  
  
"Everyone knows us. We're the fourth Elgar'vhen pair of our generation. We're hard to miss.”  
  
-  
"I have started a gambling ring." Mahanon tells her over dinner, both of them listening for scouts or soldiers as they hide in one of the farther rooms of Skyhold that has yet to face the seemingly perpetually working repair and cleaning crew.  
  
Their time together is important, and the reconstruction of the hold is very, very stressful.  
  
"We don't even have an infirmary working." Ellana says. Mahanon's eyes crinkle at the corners and she sighs. "Alright. Who's in?"  
  
"I told all the Dalish I could find." Mahanon says and putting that together with the rate of gossip -  
  
"So _every_ Dalish who came to Skyhold. And probably some city elves." She answers.  
  
"We're meeting tonight." Mahanon tells her, "When was the last time anyone here played a proper game?"  
  
"You just miss making people want to yell at you because you cheat too well to be caught properly." Ellana says.  
  
"You're not entirely wrong." Mahanon replies, "But I am also worried about us."  
  
"Us?"  
  
"It's been a long time since we've had time for play."  
  
"True."  
  
"And I'm not talking the boring shem games, either."  
  
Ellana hums.  
  
"And when was the last time we had a nice talk that wasn't in common?"  
  
Ellana sighs, "Ma nuvenin. We'll go. You think anyone else there studied Ghilan'nain's craft? I haven't been able to play Shape Twist in what feels like ages. My bones feel dull."  
  
-  
  
"This is a terrible idea." Dorian says even as Mahanon and Ellana shush him. "You are actually terrible people."  
  
"You knew this." Mahanon says, clasping Dorian's shoulder as Ellana places her hand on his back.  
  
"You adore us to little pieces, anyway." She says.  
  
"I am going to die." Dorian says. "I am too young and too pretty to die. The world will miss me."  
  
Ellana and Mahanon meet eyes and Mahanon deadpans -  
  
"Rest in pieces."  
  
Before they both push him off the waterfall.  
  
Dorian screams and the two of them cackle as they jump after him.  
  
In the distance they hear Blackwall and Sera laughing.  
  
Their fingers find each other just before they hit the water and there's a momentary shock and disorientation before they swim to the surface.  
  
Dorian is sputtering and gasping, swearing in Tevene and making flailing hand motions.  
  
He eventually rounds out by turning on them and dunking their heads back under water.  
  
Mahanon retaliates by yanking Dorian's legs out from underneath him and Ellana dunks Dorian's head back under when he surfaces.  
  
"Your face!" Sera wheezes. "Your fucking _face_!"  
  
Blackwall's face is red with laughter. "That scream."  
  
"You try being pushed off the top of a waterfall!" Dorian protests. "I think I've lost years of my life. _Years_!"  
  
"But it was fun." Mahanon says.  
  
"Wasn't it?" Ellana grins.  
  
Dorian narrows his eyes at them.  
  
"Not enough for a _second_ go around."  
  
Mahanon shrugs and Ellana hums before they climb out of the pool and start climbing to the top of the waterfall again.  
  
"Suit yourself."  
  
"Guess you're too old for fun."  
  
-  
  
Cole is perhaps the only one who understands them.  
  
"One made into two. Not two made to be one." Cole says. "She is brighter than the stars and he is the darkness you see because it is all brighter. You can't have the stars without a sky to hold them and you can't have an empty sky. The spaces that make constellations. The dark that makes you see."  
  
"I like him." Mahanon says.  
  
"Yes." She says.  
  
"I do not think he is a demon. He doesn't _feel_ like the demons that try to come to you when you sleep." Mahanon says.  
  
Try, being the key word.  
  
Because they are together, and no demon can stand up against them when they are together and one.  
  
"He means well." Ellana says. "We just have to help him sort it out."  
  
"How to be a spirit in flesh."  
  
"Like how we had to learn to be two instead of one." Ellana agrees.  
  
"He's good with a dagger." Mahanon says, as they lay together, staring at the new ceiling of their new dwelling. Stone ceilings. It's so very, very odd. And big. They feel vulnerable.  
  
They both roll onto their sides. His back against hers, spines curving into each other.  
  
"Will you teach him or will he teach you?"  
  
"Both."  
  
"Hahren is interested in him."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Stay with us."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"He is not a demon."  
  
"No."  
  
"Will he be our friend?"  
  
"I hope." 


	8. Chapter 8

"They like you fine." Cassandra says, "Or, as much as they like anyone."  
  
Cullen stares at her.  
  
"The boy wants to _hang_ me."  
  
"He doesn't." Cassandra assures him. "He only looks that way. You were convinced that I was going to execute you when I first went to Kirkwall."  
  
"I'm still not convinced that this isn't some long and drawn out execution." Cullen says. Cassandra raises an eyebrow. "In my defense, most of the people I meet _do_ want to kill me."  
  
"I wonder why?" Cassandra teases, "In any event, these two don't want to kill you. They were just raised to be cautious. A smart attitude. The girl talks to you, doesn't she? And the boy watches you train often. Perhaps they are just waiting for a sign that they are allowed to be - friendly. They seem to have warmed up to Solas and Varric well enough."  
  
Cullen isn't good at - friendly. "Solas is an elf and Varric is - _Varric_."  
  
"You're personable enough. Besides, they - " Cassandra pauses, takes in a deep breath and then says, as if she were admitting something embarrassing, "They like _me_. If they can somehow like me - and keep in mind I held a sword to the girl's throat the first time we met - then I'm sure they can grow to like you. You aren't a hard person to like. You and I are - after all - " Cassandra stops again.  
  
Cullen looks at her and can't help the smile that twitches against the side of his mouth.  
  
"Friends?"  
  
"Yes. _That_." Cassandra shifts her weight. Cullen hasn't had a friend in quite some time. He supposes it must be the same for Cassandra.  
  
Friends are something different than colleagues, superiors, or students.  
  
"I suppose if that's your advice I should listen to it." Cullen says. "If it's coming from a _friend_."  
  
Cassandra sighs and there are two high splotches of red on her cheeks.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Any tips on how to start? Suggestions? If I held a sword to one of their necks I think they really would kill me."  
  
Cassandra snorts. "I suppose you could start by talking to them about more than the state of the troops."  
  
-  
  
Mahanon drops down from one of the few climbable trees around Haven when Ellana walks out of the Chantry.  
  
"What's she like?"  
  
"You saw what she's like when we went to her party." Ellana replies.  
  
Mahanon shoots her a look.  
  
"She's opinionated." Ellana says.  
  
"Stop being polite about it. Say what you really mean."  
  
"She's a bull headed as Elgar'nan and as blind as a damned owl." Ellana says, mouth pulling down. "And as scheming as Andruil and Fen'Harel combined. She makes me want to _spit_."  
  
Mahanon snorts.  
  
"And?"  
  
Ellana takes in a deep breath.  
  
"We need her."  
  
"Are you certain?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Damn."  
  
"Damn." Ellana agrees. Mahanon curls his fingers and they turn to walk towards Solas' hut. Their knuckles bump as they walk, and Ellana tangles their hands together, running her thumb over Mahanon's, feeling his callouses against hers.  
  
"She wants to meet you." Ellana says. "She's curious about us."  
  
Mahanon's lip curls up to reveal his teeth.  
  
"I know. I don't like it, either." Ellana presses her side against his for a moment. Mahanon pushes back. "Haven's small. Better we go to her than she hunt us down."  
  
"She's every kind of shem we hate."  
  
"We have to try."  
  
"Why can't _they_ try?"  
  
"Because they're shem." Ellana says, squeeze Mahanon's hand. "And they don't know how to try. We have to show them the proper way."  
  
"You're too kind to them." Mahanon frowns.  
  
"You're too hard on them." Ellana returns. "I appreciate it, ma'vhen. But there's a time and a place for it."  
  
"And there's a time and a place to be kind, too." Mahanon says, stopping them just as Solas' hut comes into view. He lets her hand go. "I'm going to watch the troops sparring. And take a look at these Chargers you brought in."  
  
"They have a Dalish among them. I could feel her magic. Try to find her."  
  
Mahanon nods. "Ma nuvenin."  
  
-  
  
"Suspicious." Ellana says.  
  
Mahanon hums, eyebrows raising.  
  
"I didn't say anything."  
  
"I don't need you to point out something for me to know something is suspicious." Ellana says. " _He's_ suspicious. But he volunteered and I don't know if we have the right to turn him away. The Gray Warden's don't recruit like that. And normally should at least have an idea of what to do. No Gray Warden is completely cut off like that. Remember Surana?"  
  
"I don't think any Dalish in the history of ever will forget Surana." Mahanon replies.  
  
"Whenever she comes around it's like she knows _everything_." Ellana says. "And we've had plenty of Wardens come among the People. They aren't as out of the loop as this one. A messenger got lost - And he feels off."  
  
Mahanon hums.  
  
"And he felt wrong." Ellana says. "He didn't feel like the other Gray Wardens. He felt - he felt."  
  
Her brow furrows and Mahanon waits.  
  
"He felt normal." She whispers. "He felt like Krem. Not like Cullen or Casandra - there's something different about them. Different from Wardens. But he felt like Krem."  
  
"No magic." Mahanon says.  
  
"No magic." She agrees. "No _taint_."  
  
Mahanon frowns.  
  
Gray Wardens bring the touch of taint with them wherever they go.  
  
"Do you trust him?" Mahanon asks.  
  
"I don't think I have a choice." Ellana replies.  
  
"There's _always_ a choice. We could run. We could leave."  
  
"No we couldn't. Because these people need us. _Our_ people need us to do this."  
  
"I could kill him."  
  
"And how would that go, Mahanon?"  
  
They would take you away from me.  
  
Mahanon is quiet. "Have you spoken more to him?"  
  
"Not yet. I want your eyes." She says.  
  
"You are the Keeper of Secrets, ma'vhen." He touches her cheek with his knuckles, running along the lines of her vallaslin. "I don't know what you think I'll see that you don't already. For all that I am suspicious, you're the one who's better at reading people."  
  
"You have the ravens with you." She cups his jaw. "Guide me, ma'vhen."  
  
"Of course." Mahanon kisses her cheek. "Always. Here into the next." 


	9. Chapter 9

“You’re having a _what_ with _who_?” Dorian almost spits and Mahanon glares at him from across the table, slouching before putting his head on the table in a highly uncharacteristic manner. Mahanon buries his face into his arms.

“He’s having a fight with his sister.” Skinner says, patting Mahanon’s back.

“Over _what_?”

Dorian can’t understand the muffled sounds but apparently Skinner is fluent in them – he supposes that she’s had Grim to practice interpretation on -

“Solas.” Skinner translates, eyebrows raising. “Really? Why are you fighting about Solas?”

“He’s not worth fighting.” Dorian says and Mahanon raises his head to glare.

“I _know_.” Mahanon says, pauses, groans, and hits his head against his arm with a soft whine. Dorian thinks he might possibly be drunk – impossible, he’s only had one glass _today_ and it’s only _noon_ – because this is actually the most like Ellana he’s ever seen Mahanon.

It’s _cute_.

Mahanon isn’t supposed to be _cute_.

Dorian shudders a little.

“It’s my fault.” Mahanon says after a little. “I started it. But I don’t know what to _do_.”

“Do you two have a precedence for fighting?” Dorian asks, because the way they act he didn’t think they’d ever disagreed on anything, much less _fought_ over anything.

“Not like _this_.” Mahanon whines. “This is a different kind of fight.”

Mahanon turns to Skinner and says something in a mix of elven and common that makes no sense to Dorian but apparently it means something to Skinner because she nods along and looks about as concerned and worried as he’s ever seen her. It equates to a slight downturn of her lip and a furrow between her brow. Barely perceptible, but there.

“I am sorry.” Skinner says.

“I don’t know how to fix this.” Mahanon says. “But it’s my fault because I started it and I should be the one to end it but – “

The three of them jump when the door to the tavern flings open and Ellana stands there looking like the wrath of a thousand bulls or bears that got Cassandra’s shield to their face.

“Ma’vhen.” She says and Mahanon stares at her with wide eyes, seemingly frozen in place. Ellana takes in a deep breath. “Ma nuvenin, ir abelas, ma’vhen. Emma tel garas solasan, emma athim. Ir tel’bora, garas enaste?”

Mahanon stares at her and Skinner and Dorian are looking between them both and Ellana’s face is a little pink, and her eyes look a little wet.

Mahanon slowly stands.

“Aneth ara.” He says, and opens his arms.

Ellana rushes over to them, jumping over Dorian _and_ the table to wrap herself around Mahanon’s torso,burying her face into his neck.

“Aneth ara.” She says back and Mahanon sticks his face into her neck, too and they cling to each other like little monkeys and Dorian is going to leave before anything else happens.

“Never a boring day here, is there?” He asks as he and Skinner walk out into the snow.

“No.” Skinner agrees, the light from the Breach makes the snow look sickly. “Almost makes you wish for normalcy, doesn’t it?”

-

“Do you remember when we trained to learn the ways of Ghilan’nain?” She whispers and he holds her hand in his because this is perhaps the biggest thing between, them, now. Not her magic or their sexes, not their ages or even their fates as First and Hunter of their clan.

“I cannot change my skin but my mind has raven feathers.” He whispers back to her. “And my eyes are owls in flight.”

“I do not often change my skin but my heart is a bear’s fortress.” She rests her head on his chest and he tries to massage the pain out of her arm. “Fear and Deceit fly with me.”

Mahanon quiets her, runs his fingers over the cracks of the mark on her hand. “Ma’vhen.”

 _My person. My people_.

Uncountable numbers of lives rest in her, and he has loved and known her and _been her_ through all of them. His spirit.

He cannot share this with her.

It is taking her from him.

She hisses and her hand-arm-body is tense and ready to snap closed like a trap and he does not know how to fix this.

“Do you remember when you became the bear for an entire winter?” He whispers to her. “And I followed you as the owl.”

“You did not leave me. And the bear welcomed you.” She says.

“The bear knew me. And I, the owl, knew the bear.” He brushes sweat-damp hair from her forehead. “I will not leave you. I wish I could share this between us, divide the work. But I cannot.”

“I do not want to be this.” She says.

Of all the sacred arts of the people, that of Ghilan’nain’s shaping is one of their most precious. Reserved for their Firsts and Keepers, Masters of the Hunt and the most dedicated and dutiful of them.

Mahanon cannot imagine being trapped into one form – he has been so many.

He is Mahanon, always. But his mind has grown the wings of a crow and his eyes have taken the shape of owls and his hands have been wolves and his throat has been eagles. His feet have been stags and his teeth have been wolverines. He knows how to shape the mind and become kin – falon – to the creatures of tooth and claw. But she has learned to mold her body. She has learned to become the bear and she has learned how to wear the pelt of wolves and the soft velvet of does.

There is no escape from this mark.

Mahanon kisses her forehead. “Ir abelas.”

“I will die.” She says.

“I will guide you again.” He says. “And we all must die.”

“I am afraid to die like this.” She says.

“I, too, am afraid.” He tells her, and he begins to hum. A song that their Keeper has sung to them since he was new and she was fresh. Ellana closes her eyes and breathes out against his collarbone and he tucks her head underneath his chin. He continues to press and rub at the mark, but the tension never eases and the light of it always pushes past the darkness of their eyelids.

But Ellana hums with him and for now this is enough.

In this lifetime, Mahanon thinks, they will have to make it enough.


	10. Chapter 10

"Protect him. Keep him safe. He is the parts of me that I love most, my proudest parts. Please keep him safe." Cole whispers and Varric looks at him and this is the sort of thing they keep telling him not to do. But this isn't a secret and while it's private it's the kind of private Poppy would lay out into the world proudly if anyone would give her half a chance to do.  
  
"Is she okay?" Varric asks.  
  
"No. She is only half a person without him to be a person with her." Cole says. "Waiting, wanting, _always_ wanting. Wanting for more. Wanting to be _right_ and whole and wholesome again. She doesn't know how to be aware without him because he has always been the one to watch for the things she can't see and she was always watching for him. She watches many backs, now. But none are his. Keep him safe. Let me come _home_."  
  
"Is she alright, Kid? Is she _alright_?" Because the last time Cole said these kind of things the Inquisitor was facing down a dragon and half-crippled from a gash on her thigh and cuts on her feet.  
  
Cole's eyes look back and forth as if he's searching for something - for her -  
  
"She needs him." Cole says. "She needs him to guide her. She doesn't know what to do. _Dorian_!"  
  
Mahanon isn't here - he rarely stays at Skyhold if his counterpart isn't here as well - but they can get a message to him and if Varric grabs the kid and Blackwall, and rides hard, they can probably meet the Inquisitor's party halfway and help drag her back.  
  
"They've got Tiny with them." Varric says. "And Sera. Between those two, they'll make it. Come on, Kid. Let's help bring them home."  
  
"Mahanon." Cole whispers. "Panic, pain, please and pleas. Mahanon. Ellana. Mahanon. Ellana. Lavellan. Lavellan. _Lavellan_."  
  
-  
  
"You look - " Mahanon pauses, thinks it over. "I _don't_ want to put my eyes out."  
  
Ellana glares at him. "It looks awful. But it's better than that dress."  
  
It is better than the dress, Mahanon agrees.  
  
"Not by much. What, did they soak that in the blood of infants?" Mahanon snorts. "It's very _red_."  
  
"It is." Ellana agrees. "But there are pants and proper boots."  
  
"This is true." Mahanon says. "You look very."  
  
Mahanon makes a vague square with his hands.  
  
"Yes, yes, I know." Ellana crosses her arms, makes a face, then lets her arms fall at her sides. "It's not the easiest thing to move in."  
  
"Better than the dress." Mahanon reminds her.  
  
Ellana sighs. "Better than the dress. Not by much. You have to wear it too. Everyone's wearing them. Dorian, Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine, Cullen. All of us."  
  
"I don't hear you saying anyone else's name. Does the Iron Bull have to wear one?"  
  
"The Iron Bull is part of our back-up strike force and won't be actually seen so he doesn't have to wear one." Ellana says.  
  
"What a coincidence," Mahanon says, "Seeing as, I too, am part of the back-up strike force and won't actually be seen."  
  
Ellana glares.  
  
"You're going in with me."  
  
"Over someone's dead body." Mahanon taps her chin with his knuckle. "Besides, you look better than I do. I can only hurt our chances at the ball. And I'm not the one the shems have been training for the past few months for this."  
  
"But you've watched me and helped me study. You know these things as well as I do. You probably know it all better. Your memory has always been better than mine, especially for faces."  
  
"Faces of the people I hate."  
  
"Mahanon." Ellana wordlessly holds up a paper-wrapped package that Mahanon knows must be his own uniform.  
  
He sighs. "Are these even the Inquisition's colors?"  
  
"Probably not." Ellana admits. "Our soldiers don't wear red or blue."  
  
"Ridiculous." Mahanon mutters as she helps him take off his clothes to try on the uniform. "Absolutely _ridiculous_."  
  
"You’re starting to sound like Dorian, you know. You know what's going to be more ridiculous?" Ellana asks as she starts folding his clothes.  
  
"More ridiculous than sounding like Dorian? What?" Mahanon asks, pulling on the uniform's trousers. Probably the least offensive article in the entire ensemble.  
  
"Dorian in the flesh." Ellana says. "Dorian working the crowd. Dorian and all of Orlais. If they're anything at all Vivienne, can you imagine the field day Dorian is going to have."  
  
Mahanon rolls his eyes. "We both know they're - at worst - going to be Vivienne without the magic, at best Vivienne without the brain. Dorian is going to drive them into an absolute frothing frenzy. There'll be blood in the water."  
  
"Well. You know what they say about Tevinter and blood. It wont' be dull, at least. And if worse comes to worse we can always go sneak off to find Dorian."  
  
-  
  
"I love that kid. Those kids. I really, really do."  
  
Bull hums as Varric takes in a deep breath.  
  
"But they're going to drive me insane."  
  
Bull pats Varric on the back.  
  
"You're already insane. They might drive you to normalcy. But that's overrated. Not nearly as much fun. No dragons, for one thing. _Dragons_." Bull grins as Varric rubs his knuckles against his temples.  
  
"Dragons." Varric groans.  
  
"Did someone say dragons?" The twin's heads pop in through a window as if on cue. It'd be comically hilarious if it weren't so damn suspicious.  
  
Bull narrows his eye at them. For a pair that's normally so loud and obvious they're very good at sneaking up on people and going places without being noticed.  
  
Mahanon climbs through the narrow window first, pulling Ellana after him, one of them settling on either side of Bull and Varric.  
  
"Dragons." Mahanon repeats, looking up at Bull with something like glee in his normally stoic and annoyed face.  
  
"Dragons." Ellana chimes, leaning against Varric, practically vibrating out of her own skin with excitement.  
  
" _Dragons_." Bull laughs, ruffling their hair, earning a laugh from Ellana and a snarl from Mahanon. "How many have you gotten so far, Boss?"  
  
"Two." Ellana says. "I got one in the Frostbacks, Mahanon got one at the Coast."  
  
"That's two dragons too many." Varric says. "One High Dragon is enough for a lifetime. That puts me two over."  
  
"Two over?"  
  
"There's a Dragon in the book." Mahanon says, leaning around Bull to look at Varric. "Was that bit real?"  
  
Ellana wrinkles her nose. "I thought that part was made up. Why would a dragon be in a _mine_?"  
  
"Why would a dragon be anywhere?" Varric says. "It was real. Real angry alright."  
  
"Did Hawke really stab it in the eye?"  
  
"With a staff?"  
  
"While on _fire_?"  
  
"And limping?"  
  
"Or did you make that bit up?"  
  
"Which reminds me - is the part about the brothel true, or false? Cullen says it isn't true but we can't tell if he was lying or not. He was blushing and stammering too much and then he went off to go train with Cassandra and we can't just ask about brothels in front of Cassandra."  
  
"She got so mad when we asked her what a brothel was in the first place." 


	11. Chapter 11

"I don't even know why they trust you." Dorian mutters. " _Spy_."  
  
Bull hums amiable until he cuts a look in Dorian’s direction, eye sharp and a little menacing. "Says the _slave_ owner."  
  
Solas looks between them both and for once decides to stay out of it, instead turning towards the bowed heads of the twins, who've spent the better part of the past hour attempting to solve an astrarium. Ellana almost had it but it's Mahanon who's fumbling, now.  
  
"There are _extra_ stars." Mahanon says.  
  
"Just don't use them." Ellana replies.  
  
"Why would they be there if you aren't supposed to use them?" Mahanon snaps, more frustrated at having to solve this puzzle than anything else. "Just don't put in the extra stars to start with!"  
  
"Just because they aren't part of the lines doesn't mean they aren't being _used_." Ellana replies. The two are clever and sometimes Solas thinks that they know, or are perhaps closer to knowing than he thought they were –than anyone has come-  but he can't be sure about it.  
  
Bull stretches out his arm, testing the range of motion. Ill advised, considering the fall he took in their last fight but Solas isn't going to lecture the man on how to take care of his own body. At the Iron Bull's age and with his profession, he should know what he should and shouldn't be doing by now.  
  
Dorian's fingers keep sparking with magic and it makes Solas think of days that make his eyes water to think about.  
  
"Do we absolutely _have_ to do this?" Mahanon asks and Ellana looks away from the astrarium to look at him.  
  
Solas hums. "You don't _have_ to do anything."  
  
Mahanon and Ellana look at each other and sigh.  
  
" _Hahren_." They mutter before Ellana gently nudges Mahanon over to complete the puzzle.  
  
"You always say that." Ellana says.  
  
"But by that you really mean you _should_ be doing the thing." Mahanon wrinkles his nose. "Because it's a life lesson."  
  
"And will make your experience all the _richer_." Ellana snorts.  
  
"So in short."  
  
" _Yes_ we should do the thing." Ellana hums, stepping back as the astrarium hums to life. "And there we go."  
  
Mahanon quickly marks down the last astrarium's location on their map.  
  
"One more and we can go do something that's actually interesting."  
  
"This is plenty interesting."  
  
Mahanon and Ellana exchange a complex series of looks that ends in Ellana shrugging.  
  
"Well I made an attempt, no?"  
  
Solas on any given day can't be certain of half the things that go through their heads but he's fairly sure that this time it's alright if he doesn't know.  
  
-  
  
"What are they doing?"  
  
"Praying."  
  
Bull looks at Solas. "You don't like that."  
  
Solas hums.  
  
"It is neither here nor there." Solas eventually says when Bull keeps looking at him. "I should think that most are aware that I am, overall, disapproving of the practices of the Dalish."  
  
"Ever consider teaching them the proper way?" Bull asks.  
  
"No." Solas answers, immediately.  
  
The proper worship - in many cases and forms - is best left forgotten.  
  
Bull hums and sometimes when he looks at the Iron Bull he thinks of June and his secrets - Dirthamen may have been the god of them, but June was clever and hoarded his information like a miser and his gold. June was dangerous. The Dalish doesn't remember that, they don't remember much about June.  
  
And often, they forget one of the biggest parts that they do remember, the most important.  
  
June created _himself_.  
  
Dangerous.  
  
Mahanon and Ellana finish their prayers before extinguishing the fire, getting up and stretching, turning towards Bull and himself and waiting.  
  
Bull turns to Ellana. "You're going to learn to fight."  
  
Solas looks at Mahanon, "Would you stay and watch, or would you like to go learn something of setting traps?"  
  
"Traps." Mahanon answers, eyes flicking to Ellana's for a moment. "You're going to teach me how you keep trapping hares. I never see your traps but you always catch them. Braces of them. And then you're going to teach me about why you always look like you want to take my knife whenever I skin them."  
  
"There are faster ways." Solas says.  
  
Mahanon narrows his eyes. "Show me."  
  
-  
  
"No." Mahanon whispers. " _No_."  
  
He reaches out into empty air and she is gone. She's gone, elgar'vhen, where has she _gone_? He can't feel her anywhere at all. She was here and then she wasn't -

Not dead, not yet, not so soon – their lives are too short to loose each other so soon – he isn’t ready – he can’t – _he will cross to find her if he has to –_ that is what he does – she is not meant to go where he cannot follow – _take me with you_ -  
  
"Mahanon." Solas' hand is startling and a little frightening - it's not her, it's not him, it's not _them_ , where? _Where_? - "Mahanon. _We_ need _you_."  
  
Mahanon blinks and turns to the hahren. Mahanon's throat clicks when he opens his mouth. So he closes it instead.  
  
Alexius is still here. There are still people here who are fighting or about to fight.  
  
Mahanon draws one of his daggers and pulls what's left of himself together.  
  
Elgar'vhen, he thinks as Solas' barrier washes over him. He cannot think of anything or anyone else. Not Cassandra or Solas or Vivienne or Fiona or Felix or any of these shems -  
  
The parts of him that draw together without the parts of her are sharp edged and bleeding and jagged and spitting angry.  
  
He will be guiding _many_ over, today, he thinks.  
  
Ellana, his mind screams, _Ellana_.  
  
-  
  
"He's an intense young man." Josephine says.  
  
"That's one word for it." Cassandra says. This is unexpected. This is - well it is not a problem. Unless he is here to take her away, in which case it is _very_ much so a problem. They need her mark. They could always use extra hands, extra help, but ultimately they just need her. Not him.  
  
Leliana opens her mouth and Josephine turns to her -  
  
"We are not holding them hostage."  
  
"I _wasn't_ going to suggest it." Leliana says.  
  
Cassandra snorts.  
  
The door opens and Cullen comes in, looking mildly confused and mostly tired - they _all_ look mostly tired -, returning from having escorted the two out and making sure people were aware of the situation.  
  
"He's very tense. I think we should be very careful." Cullen says.  
  
"Will they run?"  
  
"The boy wants to but I'm not so sure about the girl." Cullen replies. "I wouldn't be surprised if they did, though. It's not as though people normally allied with the Chantry are welcomed friends of the Dalish. And the girl is a mage. He's most likely seen the Templars on the way in."  
  
"Not to mention, she will most likely tell him of her treatment when imprisoned." All eyes swing towards Cassandra.  
  
"I did what I thought was best at the time." Cassandra snaps. "I _apologized_."  
  
"Whether he accepts that or not remains to be seen." Leliana says. "We need her mark."  
  
"Perhaps we could send him back to her clan with a message? Better it go with a trusted member of their clan than through one of our unknown messengers." Josephine says.  
  
"If we can convince him to leave her with us." Cullen points out. "And that we aren't actually going to hurt her."  
  
"If." Cassandra says. " _If_."  
  
They all sigh. 


	12. Chapter 12

"We understand what it feels like." She says, taking his hand in one of hers, and he takes one of Cole's hands in one of his and when he looks at them he knows they understand. How could they _not_?  
  
"Yes. Yes. I see _you_." Cole says, "One soul, so vast, so large, spilling over into two, but never quite _two_. The feeling, memory, recollection of being one - so close, at the tip of the tongue, the slip of the finger, so far away, now. You can still remember what it was like to be real, yourself, whole, in almost dreams - the moment between sleep and awake and awake and asleep where you think you are finally beyond names and faces and are you again. Yes."  
  
Their hands are linked and parts of them are linked beyond hands and faces, something deeper than bone - bone deep that carves itself further and further every time. Every birth.  
  
"Do you ever not find you?" Cole asks, because they are lost and found over and over and some things stay lost.  
  
"No." He says, and their hands squeeze so tight that their skin is skin and it all goes white. "I don't know."  
  
"I don't remember." She says. "I don't _want_ to remember."  
  
"We understand the feeling of being split and not." He says, squeezing Cole's hand. "We understand what it means to be here and not here, to be and not to be. You are not alone."  
  
"No." Cole says. "I am not. I am me and you are you and together we are we."  
  
Lavellan smiles and squeeze his hands.  
  
"Yes. Let us enjoy being _we_."  
  
-  
  
Their hands are fixed to each other, fast and tight and Mahanon lost his bow somewhere in between the gates of the fortress and here and there is a _dragon_ \- an Archdaemon - that is staring down at them.  
  
Her face turns to him and he is afraid as she is afraid and she squeezes his hand so tight that he thinks he feels her nails through his gloves.  
  
There's ichor on her face and probably on his.  
  
"Mahanon." She breathes and he forces himself together - he is the guide - and lets go of her hand.  
  
"Go, I have you." He says because he will always have her and she will always have him - even when they are no longer Mahanon and Ellana, when they are no longer Lavellan, him and her, this will always be true as it has _always_ been true.  
  
She goes and he moves with her, because he is daggers and death and she is lightning and fear.  
  
They move together until they are no longer together but in the air -  
  
Mahanon reaches for her and she reaches for him and together they curl into one being and close their eyes, the mark on her hand flaring so bright it sears through both their eyelids.  
  
They open their eyes to the green dark world and her hand is his hand and strangely -  
  
Mahanon breathes. Ellana breathes. They look at - into - each other.  
  
"This is the Fade." Mahanon whispers.  
  
And he feels her like he has never felt her before. He feels so close to her - their soul can slip into one again. He can feel it. The barrier between them is so thin he could puncture it with a touch. She reaches up and ghosts her hand across the air in front of his face, a caress.  
  
Mahanon feels a shiver down to his very core, and breathes something that could be a sob.  
  
He repeats the gesture onto her and she gasps, soft and pained.  
  
Their soul has never been so close to being whole again.  
  
"I am _me_." She says and she gazes at him in wonder.  
  
And then they remember and turn to find the others who fell with them, but -  
  
Gods above and below -  
  
I am _me_.  
  
(They have never felt so alive.)  
  
-  
  
It is tradition that every twin soul gets the same mark as the original twin souls. In the stories it is said that Falon'din was the original soul, split in two, or at least - the elder of the two. So the eldest of every pair gets Falon'din. The younger gets Dirthamen.  
  
There are others who bear the marks of the Friend of the Dead and the Secret Keeper. If they have the aptitude and the blessings.  
  
But every eglar'vhen pair gets these two marks.  
  
Ellana gazes into her pair's face and gently touches the edge of his new vallaslin. His face is strange - completed - with the blood writing. It will take time to get used to. The way he looks at her, he will need to get used to it, as well.  
  
Mahanon got his late and Ellana got hers early - that is how they split the difference.  
  
It is not right if one of them gets marked before the other.  
  
Mahanon is two over twenty and she is one under twenty.  
  
She strokes his brow with her ring finger, thumb hovering over the mark on his forehead.  
  
"It suits us." She says.  
  
Mahanon hums in agreement, tracing the raven's wing on her cheek.  
  
"We are beautiful." She says and Mahanon's lips twitch upwards.  
  
"We are _always_ beautiful." He says.  
  
-  
  
"S'too early for your mystical soul twin thing." Bull says as Mahanon and Ellana climb over him and flop down on the bed. The two are so small that they can fit even with him lying down on most of it.  
  
The two whisper something to each other for a few moments and Bull takes a moment of his own to wonder what the fuck they're doing here so early in the morning - because it sure as hell isn't going to be _sex_. He's pretty sure that neither of them are very much into anything other than each other, and that's not even in a physical way.  
  
At the very least, the _boy_ isn't interested in him - the boy's main interests are hunting, his sister, baiting Dorian, and competing against Leliana's scouts to see who's better. The girl is interested in everything all at once. Again, not in the physical way.  
  
Finally he feels one of them - a quick flex and test of the weight tells him it's the girl - rolls on top of him and digs her pointy chin into his chest.  
  
"Bull?" She asks and he can feel the boy's eyes boring holes into the side of his head.  
  
"Yeah, Boss?" He asks.  
  
"We're your favorite, right?"  
  
"Sure. _Why_?"  
  
A small pause.  
  
"You'd help us sneak out of the castle to fight a dragon, right?"  
  
Bull opens his eye and somewhere between A and B, both Ellana and Mahanon are leaning over his face with their huge creepy elf-eyes wide open and as close to puppy mixed with cow you'll ever get.  
  
"Didn't you have a broken something?" He asks, eye fixing on Mahanon who shrugs.  
  
"It got better."  
  
"And didn't you have a hole in your side?" He turns to Ellana.  
  
"It's a flesh wound, Bull." Ellana says, bouncing on his stomach a little, pointy knees digging into him. "C'mon, Bull. Dragons."  
  
" _Dragons_." Mahanon repeats, and Bull adds dragons onto the list of things the kid is interested in, eyes glittering and looking about as close to pure childish delight Bull has ever seen on his face. In contrast to that special look he gets whenever he's about to make Dorian want to burst a vein from sheer annoyed rage.  
  
"It'll be fun!" Ellana says, throwing her hands up.  
  
"Dragons." Mahanon repeats, shaking Bull's shoulder. " _Plural_."  
  
"How many?"  
  
Ellana and Mahanon cackle, it's the unholy sort of sound Bull really, really wants as part of the Chargers. He'd pay them so fucking well.  
  
" _Three_." Mahanon coos as Ellana waves her hands in the air with glee. "Three dragons."  
  
"Aw, hell." Bull says, sitting up as Ellana and Mahanon scramble to his sides and start pushing him off the bed. "What've I got to live for anyway?"  
  
" _Yes_." Ellana hisses as Mahanon bounces - bounces, this kid is ridiculously happy for ass in the morning, but then again, dragons - to bring Bull his equipment. 


	13. Chapter 13

I love, Ellana says to Mahanon, a whisper as she presses the corner of her lip to the corner of his, cheeks touching, her breast against his. So close their hearts could almost embrace. _I love_.

I hate, Mahanon whispers back, his hands taking hers and squeezing like he could maybe take this from her, take this from them and throw this poison away. _I hate_.

Ellana gasps against his skin and her cheek is wet and Mahanon squeezes until their bones creak. He closes his eyes, and wants to touch his skin to her skin and maybe that will help because it’s always helped before.

Mahanon pushes his mind against hers because bodies are barriers between them and Ellana shivers. Pain and sweat and magic.

“Let go.” She says, _I love_.

“No.” Mahanon snarls, because if this thing takes her, it takes them both. It’s always been that way.

Betrayal is heavy in both of their hearts and this has always been between them, but now Mahanon has a face to hate for it. This thing that has attempted to come between them, attempted to sunder them apart. There’s a name for it, now.

_Fen’Harel._

Hahren.

 _Solas_.

 _I love_ , Ellana.

 _I hate,_ Mahanon.

 _Him_.

The glow of the anchor is too much through their closed eyelids and Ellana’s other hand forces him to let go, slowly pushing over his heart, away.

He looks into her eyes, into the other part of him, and knows. Ellana knows. He knows. They both know what they must do.

Either they both die, or they suffer a small death.

Mahanon chooses the smaller death. Ellana slowly reaches around his waist, and he feels more than he hears the sound of the dagger she pulls from the small of his waist. Hidden, small, but sharp. Like -

_I love._

_I hate._

The sound of it is something high and shaking and keening in their bones.

Mahanon squeezes the mark that’s trying to take them away, and with his other hand he covers Ellana’s hand with his own.

Together, he whispers and she whispers _we fall_.

Ellana lies down, him over her, his hand holding the anchor down. Ellana’s hand around the knife as Mahanon uses his free hand to cut through the layers of her armor to get at skin.

Slowly he covers the hand with the knife, and together, they cut.

Ellana looks into his face as he guides her hand, trusting.

 _Falon_. She sighs, tears gathering in her eyes and reflecting all the hate in Mahanon’s chest. _Falon_.

Dirthamen, Mahanon thinks, as blood pools underneath them, soaking. Mahanon squeezes the anchor like he could crush it and forces himself not to think of the hand as hers anymore. Theirs.

It is a stranger. It is the thing that tries to come between them. The thing that tries to kill her, and in turn, Mahanon.

I love, Ellana says, as he ties the tourniquet, voice faint and wavering. The fall of a single black feather. Her hand lets the knife go, Mahanon falls to the side, away from the blood, rolling to take her with him.

And they lie there, heart to heart, head to head, eyelashes kissing because this way even if she dies then at least it won’t be with this between them.

Him.

Legs tangled, hearts as one, blood on them both, this is how the Inquisition finds them.

At peace. At last.

-

“The Iron Bull has given me a word I wish to try.” Ellana tells him and Mahanon glances up from the map he’s been attempting to align with his own mental image of the Hinterlands. He hums and Ellana folds herself in front of him, fingertips brushing against the edges of the map.

“Kadan.” He says, because the Iron Bull told him before he told her. “I know.

He can feel Ellana’s disappointment at not surprising him.

“It means the center.” Mahanon continues. “It is not wrong.”

“It is not entirely right, but it is close. It feels familiar.” Ellana says. Mahanon nods, and she runs her hand through his loose hair, tugging at the strands that have escaped the loose braid he put it in earlier. “I like it. It is a better word than _soul mate_.”

Mahanon nods, leaning into her touch before shaking her hand off.

“Kadan.” Ellana repeats, and he can feel her smile, it is his smile. She slides her knuckles through his, each of their knuckles interlocking with the other, fingertips curled to touch the map. “ _Kadan_.”

“Kadan.” Mahanon says, free hand tracing the path they will take to Redcliffe when Dorian is ready to go, “Kadan.”

“Are you sure we should go?” Ellana asks him.

“You’re the one who took the letter and told Dorian about it.”

“But should we be going with him?”

“He wants us to go.” Mahanon points out. “Besides, you’re curious.”

“As if you aren’t.”

“I know better than to stick my nose into quarrels between blood of another clan.”

Ellana sighs.

Mahanon squeezes her knuckles between his, and raps the knuckles of his other hand on the floor. “Do you think we’ll have the time for anything else on the way back from Dorian verbally slaying shems?”

Ellana shrugs, “Maybe.” She circles the area where they remember a rift being with a fingertip, “I hope so. But you never know with these things. Blood is difficult.”

Mahanon thinks about their clan, their mothers and fathers and agrees.

“Another word to try out – _fasta vass_.” Mahanon says.

Ellana snorts, “So you do listen when Dorian talks.”

“Don’t let him know. He might start try talking to me again.”

-

“It’s improper.” Vivienne says to Josephine.

“They’re siblings.”

“Not as I understand their explanation, no.” Vivienne replies. “It’s improper and unsettling. And as much as I adore both of the little dears, the sentiment is not shared by the wider population. The wider population you are attempting to sway to your side.”

“So we’re supposed to separate them for the peace of mind of everyone else?” Josephine raises an eyebrow. “Hardly the best plan for getting them to cooperate with us.”

Vivienne sighs. “The rumors are already flying.”

“Rumors will always circulate.” Josephine says. “And there are many strategies to deal with them. In this case, the best one would simply be to carry on. We will not force them to sacrifice what makes them _them_ for others. We ask so much of them as it is. It is wrong for us to take this as well. It is hardly compromise when one party is the one ceding everything.”

“I’m only looking out for their best interests.” Vivienne says.

“I know. And they know that too, I think.” Josephine replies. “But the best interest here is keeping them together.”

 


	14. Chapter 14

They are so close, Solas wonders if Dirthamen and Falon’din were this close as well – it seems impossible that anyone is this close. He knows the lore, he knows the great respect and bonds between twin-souls. But still, he doubts.

They dream the same. Even though one is a mage and the other is not. Their dreams are the same. Connected, tangled and bound. Even when they are not the same, they take place in the same world, the same landscape. Ellana on one end of it, finding her way towards Mahanon on the other. Solas carefully steps into their dream – and the clarity of it is astounding. He wonders if that is because there are two of them shaping this dreamscape.

He finds Ellana lying down against a rock, eyes closed. Serene. There is no anchor on her hand, here. Not in this dream.

Solas waits – invisible, too much for their dream to contain without ripping, so he slides in as a spectator. His new students – and he has not had students in a long while, it aches somewhere he wants to forget to think of how long – are intriguing. Interesting. Indomitable.

The imagined and dreamed breeze smells like summer, warm and a little humid.

He hears the sound of rustling, turns and sees a bear meandering its way through the forest.

A few moments later, a falcon descends and lands on the rock, shifting between feathers and skin. Fluid in the way dreams can be. Turning even the most ordinary of men into a mage beyond compare.

Mahanon sits, crouched like a bird, head tilted over her, shadow blocking the light of their dream sun.

And between that moment of stillness and the next, they are wolves, tangled together, playful as they snap at each other’s ears and gnaw on each other’s jaws. Batting at muzzles with paws, barking and jumping, laughing before they are elves again.

Solas wonders if all the elves of today dream so beautifully. He hasn’t seen dreams this stable, this beautiful, and this magical since the time of _his people_.

Mahanon tweaks her ear between his fingers, smiling in ways Solas knows he would never reveal in waking hours, before dashing off into the trees with a wild and _young_ chirrup, leaping over bushes and sliding underneath low-hanging branches.

Ellana cups her hands around her mouth and ululates, jumping and transforming into a doe mid-leap, loping off after him.

Solas watches, and his mind slides away to another pair of twins.

Perhaps they were like this before. Perhaps they still were like this in their dreams.

He’ll never know, now.

-

“Nice catch.” Bull says, “What kind of bait did you use.”

Cassandra grunts, before her lips quirk up for a moment, “You catch one, the other becomes a given.”

She has a hold on Mahanon’s arm with one hand, and Ellana half over her shoulder on the other side. She dumps Ellana next to Bull, and Bull puts an arm around her shoulders before she can escape. Mahanon she sits down on Bull’s other side, and Mahanon bares his teeth when Bull puts his arm around him. Bull’s willing to risk it, though.

“Watch them.” Cassandra says, before turning around and wading back into the crowded tavern to fish out Cullen and whoever else she can find.

“Why is it crowded though?” Ellana asks.

“New alcohol delivery.” Bull replies. “The good ones.”

“We find alcohol all the time.” Mahanon says. “We have a bunch of bottles in the cellar.”

“One of them is labeled Dragon Piss.” Bull says, “That’s not actually good.”

“It has the word _Dragon_ in it.” Mahanon snorts, “I’m surprised you haven’t drunk it.”

“The word _Dragon_ does not immediately get me on board. Especially when followed by the word _piss_.” Bull says, “Be glad the Seeker got you out of that crowd. Imagine if Sera got a hold of you.”

“She’d probably use us to get to the front.” Mahanon says, slowly relaxing underneath Bull’s arm. Ellana stretches her legs out in front of herself, wiggling her bare toes. Mahanon tries to kick her from around Bull, but mostly ends up with a leg over Bull’s lap. Ellana immediately flings out her leg on top of his.

“Skirt.” Bull reminds her.

“Right.” Ellana says, bringing her other leg up and under herself, curling towards Bull and Mahanon. “I tried some of the Grey Warden ones. They weren’t bad.”

Mahanon leans around Bull to look at her. “You wouldn’t _know_. You fell asleep after your first taste.”

“No. But you tried it and said it wasn’t bad. You told me when I woke up.” Ellana bends her leg so she can nudge at Mahanon’s with her heel.

“I lied.” Mahanon replies. “I said it so you wouldn’t feel the need to try it again.”

Ellana makes an offended sound.

“Bull get me all of those bottles.” She says, “I have to test them all _over_ again, now.”

“Nope.” Bull says, squeezing both elves tighter to his side as Cassandra comes out of the crowd leading a confused and incredibly hassled looking Commander out with her. “Hey, there, Cullen. What’s wrong? You look stressed.”

Ellana clambers over Bull’s lap to squeeze in next to Mahanon. She ends up sitting half on Bull, half slouched on Mahanon, who tucks his chin over her shoulder to see, arms curling around her waist. The two of them watch as Cullen heavily sits down in the vacated space Ellana left behind.

Eerie little bas.

“I think there’s coin stuck down the back of my armor.” Cullen says, sounding dazed and bewildered. “I don’t know why.”

Bull snorts, tilting his head to look down at the twins, “Looks like someone in that crowd is already drunk if they’re trying to tip their Commander for a job well done.”

-

“Where is the Herald?” Cassandra asks.

“Outside.” Cullen says, gesturing off towards the frozen lake. “Last I heard her, at least.”

“Heard her?”

Cullen tilts his head, hums, “There.”

Cassandra listens. “I hear nothing.”

“Wait for it.”

Cassandra stares at him and wonders if this is perhaps some side effect of the lyrium – hallucinations and the sort – but then she hears a woman’s voice. Faint but drawing closer. Laughing.

Cassandra turns in the direction of the lake and sees a group of nugs squealing and running over the banks. The Herald bursts out of the snow after them, laughing as she chases them by before she dives into a snow drift.

A few seconds later her twin – who really looks nothing at all like her, and yet somehow looking at him feels like looking at her – comes out from the other direction, moving over the snow without a trace – footprint or trail – scaring the nugs into running back from where they came from. He dives into the snow just after.

“What is that?” Cassandra asks when the sounds of squealing nugs die off.

Cullen shrugs. “They were out there when I came back from checking in with the smith. It looks like play, if you ask me. It’s a thing young people do in their free time to relax. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t know.”

Cassandra clicks her tongue. “Hilarious.”

“It’s good for stress, I’m told.” Cullen continues. “You think it’s better than repeatedly destroying training dummies?”

“I’m leaving.” Cassandra says. “I’m not going to be lectured on relaxing by a man who’s never taken a sick day in over a decade of active service.”


	15. Chapter 15

Adaar has a twin hanging off each arm, a smile playing at her mouth as Ellana hangs off of one bicep, excitedly laughing as Adaar lifts her arm higher. Mahanon lightly dangles off the other one, seemingly content to just follow his sister’s lead and do as she wills.

Adaar flexes and Ellana bursts out into high, pealing laughter, leg swinging out to hook Mahanon’s across Adaar’s body.

Bull turns away towards Kaaras who just looks at him with steady, dark eyes and then pointedly looks away towards his niece.

Bull wonders if he would’ve had the guts to do what Kaaras did. Probably not.

Mahanon once looked him in the eye and told him he was brave for turning himself in to the re-educators and sometimes Bull wonders if Mahanon was just saying that because he wanted to get along. It’s not like the kid, no. But all things considered, the twins are smart and play the game well. The Ambassador and de Fer might not have noticed it yet, but those two play an entirely different level of the Game that Bull’s fairly sure only the best have ever been privy to.

If they put their minds to it, they could put every player on the board in check.

They haven’t, yet. Bull doesn’t know why, doesn’t care to know why.

He is not Ben-Hassrath here. He does not have to watch them.

(They are the ones who tell him to watch, now. And they have not told him to watch anyone, yet.)

Bull wonders how Kaaras deals with being Tal-Vashoth. Herah was never really Qunari to start with, so she does not know, he thinks. But Kaaras was Qun.

How the hell does he not go insane?

Bull turns back to the twins and Adaar.

Mahanon and Ellana both are hanging of her back, one head one either side of her shoulder as Ellana chatters into Adaar’s ear and Mahanon carefully, slowly runs a finger over the curve of Adaar’s horns.

“Asala esaam hissera, esaam herah.” Kaaras says, voice low and pitched not to be carried. How many years of being out of the Qun – Bull wonders if he ever learned common.

“Ash hissera esaam imekari. Saar-hissera. Asit tal-eb.” Bull says. Because he can understand hope in a child. Recovery in time? Perhaps not so much. The wound is still fresh in him. But he can understand hope. It is dangerous. But it was worth it.

They are worth it.

-

Mahanon is three above ten, and Ellana is three less than that, when they hear that the curse of the Brecilian Forest was lifted by a Grey Warden.

He is three above ten, and Ellana is three less than that, they are not yet initiates into the cult of the Twins. When Ellana is as Mahanon is now, and Mahanon is three above that, _then_ they will formally join those ranks. But they know whispers and secrets, they have snuck to the Keeper’s tent to listen when agents of the Twins come to the camp to listen. They know that whatever was in the Brecilian Forest was _not good_.

The lifting of the curse is neither good, nor bad. Just change.

“It lasted too long.” Ellana says, “Too long.”

Mahanon doesn’t think so. Mahanon thinks that curse could never have been lifted and it would be _fine_.

“The wound doesn’t heal if it’s always open. That’s what hearth-keeper taught us.” Ellana reminds him, taking his hand in hers as they swing their legs into the slowly moving stream. The water is cool on their toes, Mahanon stretches his legs out in front of him.

He shrugs.

“Maybe it shouldn’t heal.”

“All wounds must heal. That’s nature.” Ellana says.

“Not unless you want the wounded to die.”

Ellana looks at him out of the corner of her eye and does not say anything because they both were thinking it anyway.

“The Grey Warden was not Dalish.” Mahanon eventually says.

“She was from the Circle. But she is still of the people.” Ellana says. “They say she was _young_.”

“And beautiful.”

When they are of that age, they wonder what they will be doing. Surely not lifting curses.

Having babies, starting a new clan – acting as agents of the Twins. Hunting and viciously scraping by for something that is not death and danger.

Mahanon squeezes Ellana’s fingers.

“I want to go away.” Mahanon whispers.

“I cannot go.” Ellana’s lip crumples.

“I will take you.”

“We cannot go.”

“Why not? We are raven wings.”

“I am First. I cannot leave.”

“We do not know if you are going to be First for sure. There is one older than you already.” Mahanon says, looking down at their hands because they both know that it is settled. Ellana has too much magic to not be First. She is a soul, she is a mage.

Only a dead fool would pass her over as First.

“I want to go away.” Ellana whispers.

“We cannot go.”

-

“Admit it, he’s growing onto you. Like a creeper vine.”

“I do not need to remind you that tree growing vegetation tends to be parasitic.” Mahanon says, shifting as Ellana presses against his side, matching their strides as he makes his way to the stable to check on one of the harts. Dennet is a wise man but you can tell that he has only worked with horses before. Mahanon does not blame him for his inattention to the harts. The man does not yet know what to look for.

“You’re growing to be fond of him.” Ellana needles and Mahanon snorts.

“I suppose that over time one does get used to dealing with that one finicky and irritating halla in the herd, yes. Or the lazy hunting dog.” Mahanon swings himself over the stable gate, holding out his hand for Ellana to follow. He scans the stables and finds the Red Hart at the end.

“He’s very happy that he got you to exchange more than morning greetings with him today. Unprompted, morning greetings, no less.” Ellana says, picking up an apple out of one of the sacks by the door. She takes Mahanon’s knife and starts cutting it into quarters, offering the first quarter to the Red Hart. “And what’s wrong with you today?”

“I think he injured his leg when he was being taken out for one of his runs.” Mahanon says, “Red Harts aren’t good on ice and snow. Red Harts are the ones that hibernate, right?”

Ellana hums. “I’m sorry we don’t have better places for running.”

The hart breathes a moist puff of air against Mahanon’s cheek before stretching his neck around him to pluck the quarter apple from Ellana’s fingers with a delicate motion of his lips and teeth.

“They migrate.” Ellana says to him. “Wild Harts are the ones that hibernate.”

“Right.” Mahanon says, kneeling to check the hart’s legs. “As an aside – the message from The Collective. What do you think it means?”

“The one about death being no barrier to victory?” Ellana muses, “Well. We already know death is no barrier.”

Countless lifetimes they have spent finding themselves in each other, again and again.

“Yes. But what do you think we sent out for?”

“A surprise.” Ellana muses. “And who are we yet, to say no to offers of help?”

 


	16. Chapter 16

And this is Mahanon, she doesn't say when she clasps his hand in hers, the other side of me. This she does not say. This, she _never_ says. Not to Solas, not to Dorian, not to Cullen or Bull or Cassandra.  
  
There is no one here who would understand, who would know.  
  
Solas knows, but says nothing and she wonders if this, too, is another thing he thinks is foolishness on behalf of the Dalish. But it _isn't._  
  
This is something deeper than the remains of Arlathan.  
  
This is something Fade-deep, death-deep, soul-deep.  
  
Mahanon's hand takes hers, and their flesh is divided but their souls remain singular. How could she have ever left _this_ behind?  
  
To Dalish alone she says the words, the strange sounds that barely scratch the surface of _them_ and their innumerable lifetimes as each other.  
  
This is Mahanon, my other face, she says to Dalish who shares her markings but not the state of her soul. To Dalish she says this, even though Dalish probably already knows because the elgar'vhen of their generation are a handful in number and only one pair of those have chosen to call themselves  _Lavellan_.  
  
To everyone else she says, this is Mahanon, my twin.  
  
And it is not nearly anything close to the truth.  
  
Mahanon and she look nothing alike, are matched in nothing except their paired vallaslin. Dirthamen and Falon'din.  
  
Mahanon is three years older, she is three years the younger, and it does not truly show because elves do age well. But Mahanon is tall and long and sharp where she is small and narrow and tapered. Mahanon is light where she is dark, and he is dark where she is light. Mahanon is straight lines where hers are curved, and where her lines stop his continue.  
  
Only the blind would accept the idea that they are twins in blood.  
  
The twin of my soul, Ellana thinks, which is not right, either. They are not mirrors or duplicates. They are one and the same.  
  
And this is Mahanon, she does not say when she is introduced to nobles and supplicants and petitioners and recruits and volunteers and the endless, endless stream of people who want to look in her face marked for the Death Guide's other and see their burning bride, he is of me and to look upon him is to look upon _me_. Treat him as you treat me. We are the same tree, woven and split when young by a stick in the way of our growing branches.  
  
-  
  
Mahanon clucks, lips pulling up in a brief - but noticeable - smile before he turns away and tosses his knife at the target.  
  
"Careful, I might start to think you _like_ me." Dorian says.  
  
"Wouldn't want that." Mahanon breathes.  
  
"Aren't you supposed to like me just for the fact that your sister does?"  
  
"She's the half that likes things. I'm the half that considers how things could die fastest." Mahanon replies. "As an aside, she's also the half that observes target patterns and weak points. Just so _you_ know how _I_ know."  
  
"Know what?" Dorian hedges after Mahanon falls silent for a few more knife throws.  
  
" _You_ know." Mahanon simply says. "You know _exactly_ what I know."  
  
Dorian turns away from Mahanon to look at Varric who shrugs.  
  
"I am not the only one who thinks this is ominous and needs a quick and thorough investigation."  
  
"No, but you're the only one baiting the elf with the knife." Varric points out. "Consider it a win he's even talking to you. Kid still hasn't warmed up to Curly."  
  
Mahanon makes a sharp noise of derision.  
  
"Now I _know_ Ellana likes him perfectly fine." Dorian turns back to him, "What's _your_ problem with him?"  
  
"Everything." Mahanon answers, examining the knife in his hand before making it disappear somewhere on his person. Dorian will someday understand how the man can be armed to the teeth whilst wearing so few layers.  
  
"Give him a break, he isn't even a templar anymore." Varric says. "He's not all bad. If you saw him in Kirkwall, you'd know that this is a big improvement. I mean - the _hair_ alone."  
  
Mahanon eyes Varric for a moment before shrugging and walking over to his target to remove his knives. "Perhaps I dislike him _because_ he is no longer a templar. And perhaps I dislike him _because_ he isn't all bad. How are we to know?"  
  
"Don't tell me _you_ don't know why you hate him."  
  
"Hate is a strong word." Mahanon turns to Dorian. "And while I do hate, I do not hate _him_. Yet. The tree is still young, there's time enough yet for the water to grow poisonous."  
  
"What does that _mean_." Dorian turns to Varric and gestures at Mahanon as if to say look at this, "Who speaks like _that_? What does this mean?"  
  
"Elves do."  Varric snorts, "You get used to it."  
-  
  
"When you write this book, will you write in the part where Cassandra reads your novels?" Mahanon asks, and Varric hums.  
  
"Tempting. I need an ending to write it, though."  
  
"You don't have an ending for Swords and Shields. You write it anyway." Mahanon points out.  
  
"Ah, but that's a different sort of series. I'm not making a series out of this - maybe I should. It's damned long enough for one. Complicated enough for one too." Varric muses. "But no, I'm not making a serial out of this. By the way - that was me saying that we have to survive this for me to make a book out of it."  
  
Mahanon is quiet where Ellana would hum. Varric gets the distinct feeling of being hummed at anyway.  
  
"So what brings you to my corner at this time of day?" Varric asks and Mahanon tilts his head.  
  
"It is raining and Cassandra gets nervous when I practice with knives in the rain. I do not see why. I have excellent grip and control. I would not hurt myself or anyone else on accident."  
  
"It's probably more of a she's worried you'll get sick thing." Varric says.  
  
" _Oh_. I did not realize she cared." Mahanon blinks, standing up and tilting his head towards the high ceiling, arms crossed as he contemplates something. Varric waits.  
  
After a bit of staring Mahanon sits back down and folds his hands.  
  
"Varric, do you think that I've been mean to her?"  
  
Varric raises an eyebrow. "I'm not sure. Why do you think so?"  
  
"Because I thought she did not like me, so I stayed away from her as much as possible." Mahanon says, "But if she cares about me getting sick, then perhaps she does not dislike me and I have been avoiding her for no reason. Would that upset her, if I avoided her? I did not avoid her to upset her."  
  
The Seeker probably isn't that sensitive, Varric thinks. Except that she sometimes _is_.  
  
"You could always make it up to her now."  
  
"Like how you did with Sword and Shields? Varric, I cannot write a romance novel like you." Mahanon's brows draw together as he frowns at his hands. "I could make her a carving?"  
  
"You do that." Varric says, "And I'll tell you some stories about how the Seeker dragged me to the Conclave from Kirkwall."


	17. Chapter 17

The twins, for the most part, have taken to ignoring them during these little get together meetings. Not that Dorian blames them, he half wishes he didn’t come to most of these meetings, himself.

The Commander looks absolutely miserable. Most likely because he has to be the one responsible for making sure they all get to their quarters without embarrassing the entire Inquisition on a bi-weekly basis.

Dorian thinks this would normally be a task delegated to Josephine, or perhaps Cassandra. Or one of the similarly, much more intelligent and capable women of this castle. Considering that this entire show is basically run by women.

The men, Dorian has quickly figured out, are essentially here to look good and clench their jaws in suitably attractive ways. Except Blackwall, because so far Dorian is fairly certain Blackwall is just here to brood quietly in a corner about life as a Grey Warden. Romantically isolated, that lot. Also probably a bit daft from fighting all those darkspawn.

Ellana and Mahanon spend most of these bi-weekly get togethers – when they’re in Skyhold – sitting on the floor by the fire and playing a game with sticks. Dorian has been watching this game for almost four months and he still hasn’t figured out the rules. He’d ask Solas but _over his own dead and burning body is he going to ask that stuck up hermit for anything_.

Ellana and Mahanon will, on the occasion, deign to grace the table with a cursorily glance before deeming the proceedings and conversation too boring or, quite possibly, too Andrastian – and for all he knows _both_  – for their tastes and returning to their game.

Dorian is half attempted to throw in a word about the True – sorry, _Black_  – Divine just to stir things up.

Granted, Cassandra and Leliana might just throw him over a rampart, but it’d be amusing.

Dorian has, perhaps, had a little too much of this Chasind Sack Mead.

He’d go back to the Alvarado’s Bathtub Boot Screech, but the last time he drank some of it he woke up in a tree about two miles out from Skyhold with Sera in his lap, a boot in his hand, Stitches hanging by his trousers by the tree branch just underneath him, and some soldiers yelling for him, Sera, Varric, Blackwall, and Rocky.

Never again.

Cassandra takes another shot of – _something_. Possibly Antivan Sip-Sip. Dorian does not envy the person who has to persuade her back to her rooms later tonight. Judging by the wince Cullen lets slip it’s probably him. Poor sod.

Dorian pours him some Flames of Our Lady because it only seems fitting.

Cullen stares at him for a few moments, most likely trying to figure out if this is a ploy or sincerity. Dorian smiles. Cullen’s lip quirks up at the corner and he takes a slow sip of it. Good man.

Ellana’s dark eyes peer over the edge of the table before her arm quickly darts out and grabs a handful of miniature cheese wheels.

Dorian and Cullen watch her slither back over to where Cole has joined Mahanon in the game. The two elves have been sharing a bottle of some unmarked vintage. To Dorian’s knowledge, Mahanon got it smuggled in from some of the Dalish messengers that they’ve been communicating with allied clans with.

There’s nothing on it except a strange, crude drawing of a single leaf and what could be either a star or a dead man.

Sera had asked what it was earlier and the two had shared amused looks with Dalish and Skinner before snickering at each other. Skinner is the only one of them fluent enough to translate for the non-speaking Dalish present but as always she remains somewhat tight lipped on the subject.

From what Dorian can gather, it’s something naughty.

It usually tends to be so.

The two Lavellans split the cheese wheels between themselves and Cole. Sweet of them, considering Cole is going to end up feeding them to mice or some sort of vermin.

Dorian tunes back in to the conversation at the table and finds it somewhere wildly far away from the last topic they were at. The last topic they were at was addressing what uniforms shall be used at the Winter Palace. They are now, somehow, on the topic of pelicans. _Pelicans_.

Why does Dorian even go to these gatherings?

-

“Surely the Inquisition can afford to clothe its Herald.” Vivienne says and Josephine turns in time to see Lavellan – Ellana – run through the main hall in a flash of skin and hair and a little bit of magic. “Or at least, half of their Herald. The half with the Anchor.”

A few moments later, Mahanon follows after his sister in a similar state of skin and hair.

Josephine sighs.

“Whatever makes our Inquisitors comfortable.”

“It must be some sort of health or safety risk.” Vivienne muses. “They are quite lovely, such wonderful features. Surely there’s a way to present those features in a way that does not risk frost bite or other similar health concerns?”

Josephine pinches the bridge of her nose.

Ellana tends to go around in something that very closely resembles a loose sack – with some sort of form fitted leather or mail underneath. Mahanon will either be shirtless or wearing what looks like a ripped up blanket that’s been vaguely tied around his shoulders in a half-hearted attempt to keep it on.

Whether or not either of them have boots on at any given time is anyone’s guess.

Frankly, Josephine is just thankful that they swing towards more conservative dress for their scheduled meetings and judgments.

“It has not yet become the problem it could be. And to be honest, we have higher priorities.” As if on cue, there’s a loud crash from one of the scaffolds and the sounds of alarmed shouting and irritated cursing. Another part of the ceiling has fallen down.

Vivienne hums. “Should I call my tailor? I’m certain if we put our heads together we could sort out something that’s a little more covering and still allows them their freedom of – expression.”

“I would ask them.” Josephine says. “And I would come up with some ideas beforehand. Consider it a debate. Excuse me, Madame de Fer. I have to speak with Solas about paint.”

-

“What is that?” The boy says, pointing at a small jar Bull placed aside from his cleaning tools. Bull hums.

“Vitaar.” Bull says, “In common, _poison armor_.”

Mahanon hums, slowly turning over the clay jar in his hands, tilting it for Ellana to look at. Both of them murmuring in their half-Dalish, half-secret language to each other.

“It is armor?”

“But it is also a poison?”

“So it is a weapon?” Mahanon’s brows draw together. “A weapon you use on others? Do you put it on your weapons? In their food?”

“But then why would it be armor?” Ellana asks, head tilting as she touches her finger to the lid. “Can we touch?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it.” Bull holds his hand out and Mahanon places the jar in his palm. Bull opens it, tilting it so the two can look. They crowd in, and Bull holds it back a little. “Don’t breathe it. It’s toxic to non-Qunari.”

“The people or the culture?”

“The people.” Bull clarifies. The two murmur some more, heads tilting like a two-headed serpent. “When my people put it on, it makes our skin hard. Can’t feel shit. Can’t get hurt. But we can still move and stuff.”

Bull dips a finger in and draws the crest of the Qun on his forearm.

“It is like – battle paint?” Ellana asks as the two draw close to his arm, poking and prodding at the skin around the drawing with sharp little fingers. Ellana says something to Mahanon with the bump of her hip and the drape of her hair that causes Mahanon to make a sharp noise of understanding.

“Something like that, yeah.” Bull says.

“Do you just – “ Mahanon gestures at Bull’s body. Ellana shakes her head.

“It’s too little for that.”

“It’s like your vallaslin.” Bull says, the word a little unwieldy in his mouth. The two wait. “There are patterns. I don’t use that much. I only do my face.”

“Show.” Mahanon demands.

“Please.” Ellana softens.

Bull ruffles Mahanon’s hair with the hand that doesn’t have vitaar on it, and beckons them closer.

“Do you need a mirror?” Ellana asks.

“No. I know it.” Bull says.

Ellana and Mahanon murmur, “Like how Keepers know the vallaslin. Are you like a Keeper, Bull?”

Then to each other - “Of course. Chargers. _Obvious_.”

Bull watches them, amused as they agree with each other, before turning back to him and waiting.

Bull dips his fingers back into the clay and raises them to his face.


	18. Chapter 18

Her breasts, his thighs; her heart, his spleen.

His mouth, her tongue; his eyelashes, her fingertips.

It all lines up, softly, neatly, carefully and quietly. It all matches. Wonderfully, beautifully. His hand is larger, broader, but her fingers are quicker and more calloused and scarred. A study of balances. Pull and push, ebb and flow, a rise.

A fall.

One looks, one listens. One takes, one holds. One stops, the other goes. Balances that don’t quite balance because they aren’t halves, rather extensions of the other.

So – in their defense.

Her hand, his heart. Her death, his wrath. His blood, her denial.  His bones, her vengeance.

In their defense -

A demon reaches for him with claws that drip in the blood of the fallen, and he flinch-hisses with pain as embers fly into his face. In their defense, she screams ice into the desert night, and lightning illuminates the fortress square and turns desert sand to glass that shines hot and molten underneath their feet.

Wardens fall, hands over their eyes as she closes her arms around him and they slip through space away. Far away. Cheek to cheek, and he pulls a dagger with lips curled over his teeth.

In their defense -

Themselves.

-

“I don’t like you.” Sera says.

“Fine.” Mahanon replies, easy as he walks straight past her, eyes forward, shoulders loose, right out the other side of the tavern, carrying the bottle of ale with him to deliver to his sister.

“Nice.” Varric says. “Was that supposed to do something?”

“I don’t like him.” Sera repeats. “He’s creepy weird. Wrong feeling.”

“I don’t think he cares.” Varric says.

“I don’t care if he cares. I want him to _know_. Doesn’t anyone else thinks it’s weird? That he’s weird? Sometimes he just _looks at you_. And _eugh_.”

“It doesn’t help that you’re insulting him at every chance you get. He’d probably like you better if you didn’t.”

“Oh, no, Mahanon thinks Sera’s amusing.” The rogues startle and turn to see Ellana, smiling beatifically at them. “He likes that she’s honest. And he likes what she does with her Jennies.”

Varric gestures to the door Mahanon just left. “Didn’t he just – ?”

Ellana looks vaguely puzzled.

“Go to get you.” Sera finishes.

“No.” Ellana says and falls silent, offering no explanation. “Mahanon doesn’t care if you don’t like him because he doesn’t care if anyone likes him. And he knows people don’t like him, but that doesn’t matter. Why should it?”

Ellana tilts her head the other way, “Have you made it so it should matter?”

Sera wrinkles her nose.

Ellana is still watching Sera and Varric wonders if maybe Sera confused the way Mahanon looks at people with the way Ellana looks at people. Similar but different. They both have a way of looking at you like they’re seeing something you’ve tried to hide underneath the floorboards, but they _know_ everything about whatever it is you’ve hidden. And they think it’s amusing that you think that _no one could possibly know_.

But Mahanon looks at you like he’s debating whether or not he wants to set the building on fire to see if you want to make a go for the hidden think. Ellana just looks at you like she’s silently commanding you to pick up the floor boards and show her yourself.

Ellana’s eyes are still fixed on Sera, but she’s talking to Varric when she adjusts her shoulders and says, “Josephine was looking for you. She has questions about the Carta and coterie.”

Varric is honestly a little nervous to leave the two alone. Not alone, the tavern always has at least half a dozen people. But somehow Ellana’s sheer _presence_ pushes them out of the room, looming and swallowing the air.

Ellana reminds Varric of something that pounces. Sera reminds Varric of the poor thing that doesn’t dodge in time.

-

Mahanon’s cheek bulges and his eyes dare Dorian to comment.

Dorian is not, actually, as foolish and foolhardy as some people would like to think he is. Nor is he so proud as to answer said challenge when he knows that he can really only be the loser.

Dorian is not ashamed to admit that of all these southerners, Mahanon and Ellana are the ones who give him a run for his money. Ellana through subtle manipulative means – clever girl – and Mahanon through outright physical terror.

The number of times that man has snuck up and startled Dorian to near death is ridiculous. Dorian isn’t even counting anymore. He decided it was better for his health that way.

Dorian is fairly certain that between Ellana’s sanguine countenance and Mahanon’s personal brand of psychological warfare the two are conditioning him. Conditioning him! As if he were a _dog!_

And damn it all _it’s working_.

Dorian says nothing and sits down across from him.

Ellana smiles as she approaches, gliding up to the table and sitting next to him. He feels her leg move under the table, crossing a little over his shin, so her heel can rest on Mahanon’s outstretched leg.

“Dorian.” Ellana says, arm brushing against his. At first he thought she was flirting with him, and then he was terrified that _that_ was why Mahanon was _Mahanon_ , but then he quickly realized she’s just sweet like that.

And if someone sees the Herald of Andraste being nice to the local Tevinter runaway? Well. That can’t hurt overly much, can it?

It’s not like anyone can insult him if she’s around. Likewise, her rather feral-faced brother.

“What have you been up to? Up to. Such a strange phrase. _Up to_.” She muses, fingers picking at a piece of string she’s pulled from inside her sleeve. “I wonder where it comes from. _Up to_. Dorian do you know?”

“Not an idea.” Dorian replies. “And I have been up to organizing the scant literary resources this Inquisition of yours has to offer. That is to say – I finished that and there’s nothing else to do, so I just glare at books and sometimes go to argue with your alchemist and pester him into letting me make rudimentary potions. I think that he thinks I’m incompetent.”

“He thinks your _something.”_ Mahanon says, the bulge in his cheek whittled away down to the smallest little lump. Refilled once more when Mahanon stuffs some breads into his mouth. Ellana opens her mouth and Mahanon reaches across the table to place the small remaining piece into her mouth.

“Charming? Dazzling? A gift to the south?”

“A lush.” Ellana says. “Cullen told us that word when we asked him about why Adan doesn’t like you.”

Dorian hasn’t quite worked up the courage to sass the Commander out in the field to his face. Especially not surrounded by templars and soldiers with pointy, pointy sharpened sticks they use for practice.

“Well. There are worse things to be.” Dorian declares.

“Cullen was probably withholding those worse things to be.” Mahanon says. “Because he knew we’d tell you eventually. You should thank him for that.”

 


	19. Chapter 19

“The Dread Wolf will not have you.” Mahanon reminds her in the dark. His hand spreads over her arm, the tip of his small finger just brushing against the sensitive edge of scar tissue.

“We bit his tail.” Ellana whispers, some part of her still in shock, some part of him still reeling with revelation and regret. Mahanon’s greater instincts to try and keep distance were right. They should have listened to them. This is Ellana’s fault. It would not hurt so much if they had not trusted him so.

“Now it is ours.” Mahanon says, she can feel his heartbeat on her skin, and when she turns her head, his eyes are closed but his face is towards her. She traces the lines of his vallaslin with her eyes.

Slave markings.

She closes her eyes and wants to refuse to believe.

They are holy. They are reminders.

They are violence and brutality solidified. They are _scars on their people._

Their right hands tangle between them, resting on her stomach, touching against his.

“I do not regret.” Mahanon admits. “I am only angry.”

Ellana squeezes his hand, and he squeezes back.

“I should be angry, too.” Ellana says, “I feel only empty. Raw. Like I am waiting to be angry.”

“But you do not want to be.”

“If I am angry – I feel like it will push me over. Into something I can never be free from. If I become angry, I am afraid that I will never see my own face again. Always a stranger – sick and ill, upset and hurting.”

Mahanon’s hand squeezes her arm, finger pressing down at the edge of scar tissue. It send sparks of recoiling hurt and denial up and down her bones.

“I would always know you.” He says, voice touching at something reproachful, hurt.

“And I would always know you.”

“We are the _same face_.”

“But I do not know if I understand how that face is changing. I do not know if I like it.” The words – a question to Mythal, a call for blessing from Ghilan’nain almost slips past her lips.

They both flinch.

Never again.

 _It was all a lie_.

Were Dirthamen and Falon’Din even souls?

Souls exist – _they must exist_. They are not the only elgar’vhen in recorded history. Remembered history. They aren’t. _They are not alone_.

They both shiver and draw close, Ellana turns onto her side – and winces when cold air hits the exposed skin of her scar. She presses their foreheads together, and they bring up their knees, pressing their legs together knee, shin, top of foot. The space between them is filled with their breathing, and the link of their hands.

Mahanon hums. What songs do they have that are not about false gods?

Enough.

Lavellan sings the chant of bloodlines because they have grown past their lost ancestry. They can grow past this, as well.

-

“Meat!” Mahanon exclaims, softy into her ear from the shadows. She turns her head towards him and he’s gone and Lavellan laughs because meat! They’ve been on rations for a long time and they’ve finally gotten to an area where their hunters can go out without worry or fear.

She is quick to put away her knives and the ingredients she was cutting for the Keeper.

“Meat.” She agrees. And she, herself, isn’t normally too fond of it but even she gets tired of stale bread and dried apples. Anything to sink her teeth into.

Mahanon is a shivering shadow, anticipatory and waiting as she carefully puts everything away. As soon as she’s done he grabs her hand and they race off towards the cooking fires. She can smell it cooking already -

“Stag?” She asks. Mahanon’s head shakes in the corner of her eye and he laughs.

“Braces of quail.” He says, “They found the nests, too!”

“Eggs!” She gasps.

“Hares.” Mahanon continues. “I got to help with the skinning.”

“Hares too?”

“ _Two rams_.” Mahanon says, reverent.

Ellana has no words for such a miracle.

There’s already a small crowd of their fellow da’len and some of the mothers around the cooking fires. They go onto their toes to look over some of the older da’len and see the men and women crouched by the fires, holding fans and sticks and checking on the cooking irons.

“How long has it been?” Mahanon whispers to Ellana out of the corner of his mouth.

“Months.” Ellana replies. “ _Months_.”

Ellana can rest her hand on Mahanon’s side and fit her fingers into hollows that are beginning to deepen over his ribs. He can do the same.

“Too long.” They agree and wait.

-

“And where’s your lighter, fairer, and generally more pleasant to be around half?” Dorian asks and Mahanon just gives him a _look_.

“She’s with Adaar.” Mahanon answers.

“Is that a note of jealousy I hear?”

Mahanon answers with yet another look.

“We decided that we shouldn’t mob her.”

“Which implies that you’ll get a turn at following her around like a newly imprinted chick sometime later?”

Mahanon refuses to answer Dorian at all.

“What is she doing with Adaar?”

“Watching.” Mahanon replies.

“And what brings you here to my little corner of Skyhold?” Dorian asks as Mahanon’s eyes glance over books and shelves. The kind of look of someone who can’t read; taking in images rather than reading spines. He knows that Ellana and Mahanon have been learning to read, but their progress is somewhat slow. It’s rather hard to have regimented lessons when you’re in and out fighting for the fate of the world.

Mahanon shrugs, reaching out to touch his finger to the shelves. Ellana does the same when she wants to touch the books. As if they think they aren’t allowed.

It’s their _castle_.

There’s precious little that’s forbidden to them within it.

“Stories.” Mahanon says just as Dorian considers going back to his book. “Do you have stories?”

“With this amount of books I’m certain that there’s at least one with stories that would make even _you_ smile.” Dorian says, setting the book in between the cushions of his chair and standing up. “Anything in mind?”

Mahanon thinks, “What stories do you like?”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

Dorian watches Mahanon who watches him back. This is perhaps one of their strangest but also nicest conversations.

“Well. I have to admit I’m rather fond of stories in which the underdog wins.” Dorian says gesturing for Mahanon to follow him as he goes to the rather limited section of fiction books that Skyhold possesses. “And it doesn’t hurt if that underdog is a mage.”


	20. Chapter 20

Bull hears the faintest sound of feet on grass before he feels them on him. One – two pairs of hands and feet quickly climbing up his back, using the backs of his knees and calves, his hips and his waist to clamber up. He feels their bare toes dig into his skin, and their little fingers and nails scrambling over his skin before their weight balances over his shoulders. One face mashes its mouth to his shoulder, the tip of an ear just brushing against the side of his head. A chin, on his other shoulder, pressed into the junction between neck and shoulder, a warm throat gently swallowing. Two breaths soft and warm gently blowing against his skin.

And their arms, legs, bodies, everywhere else.

It takes the two of them to fill the span of his shoulders. He barely feels their weight. It’s like a squirming axe or sword, he figures.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a faint tuft of dark hair that tells him that the chin is the girl, meaning the mouth is the boy.

He hums and the two chitter, sharp little animal sounds. He waits for an explanation, and when all they do is swing their legs, fidget, and generally just chirrup and chatter in those high little animal sounds he shrugs a little and keeps walking. The two express their displeasure at the shrug with what sounds like a really, disturbingly accurate bear grunt.

He can feel them, jostling each other, legs bumping, reaching across him to touch and prod and tease.

Their sounds vary from incredibly high dog barks to strange and whispering hisses. A language that isn’t.

Most everyone he passes gives them odd looks, but that’s not so different from being a one-eyed Qunari this far south, and it’s not so different from walking around with someone who’s hand glows green.

Dalish finds him as he’s walking on the ramparts – at this point he’s done everything he’s needed to do, and the two on his back are generally steering him wherever they want to go with pokes and pulls. Dalish storms up to him, stomping her feet on the stone.

“You.” She says.

“Me.” Bull replies, tilting his head slowly towards her so he doesn’t smack Ellana in the face with a horn.

“You are _spoiling_ them.” Dalish says. “They don’t do this to anyone else. And it’s because they know you don’t say _no_ to them. Not even _Solas_ tolerates this.”

Bull doesn’t picture Solas tolerating much of anything, to be honest.

Dalish says something to them and Mahanon’s forehead presses into Bull’s shoulder and he whines, a sad puppy-kind of sound. Ellana moves over across Bull’s back, her nose and the curve of her face pressed more into Bull’s neck, right behind his ear, than against his shoulder anymore.

Dalish reaches up and snaps her fingers close to Ellana’s face and repeats it – a certain kind of steel in her voice that reminds Bull that she was a leader once, too.

“You’re not babies.” Dalish says when Ellana hisses and kicks out at her, Bull catches Ellana’s foot in his hand and Ellana sighs. “You’re past this stage. Don’t take advantage of the Iron Bull because he’s soft on you.”

“I’m not _soft_.” Bull says.

All three elves present _snort_.

The two elves on his back murmur to each other, a strange sort of sound that doesn’t sound like words or sounds but wind, Dalish standing there tapping her foot.

Then abruptly the two drop from his shoulders and slink around him to face Dalish’s displeasure. Ellana scuffs her heel against the stone and Mahanon’s mouth is _pouting_. Dorian would kill to see this, probably.

Dalish looks between the two of them and raises a single eyebrow and points at him.

The two sigh, longsuffering, and turn around, both looking at different points to either side of him.

“Sorry.” They mutter, then as one they run and fling themselves off the ramparts.

There’s a cacophony of shrill screaming from various people in the garden and Dalish sighs before glaring at him, jabbing her finger at him.

“Stop spoiling them.”

Bull shrugs. “Jealous?”

Dalish snorts and throws her hands up, muttering to herself as she walks away.

-

Mahanon is all sharp angles and downturned mouth and pointed brows when he cuts a wide circle around the camp to stand in front of him. Cullen’s eyes scan the camp, half expecting Ellana to have meandered her way around in a faint tangle of footsteps that would call to mind a bee.

“I have treated you unfairly.” Mahanon says, and Cullen turns back to him. Mahanon’s hands are loose at his sides and he looks straight at Cullen’s face. Ellana doesn’t shy away from eye contact either, rather she just gets distracted by looking at other things. The engraving on his breastplate, an odd looking cloud, the way the wind ruffles his furs, a passing dog, the way her feet look in the snow. She’s no less involved for her broken eye contact.

Cullen isn’t sure what to say, so he says nothing. Mahanon apparently takes this as the response he wants because he nods and continues -

“I have been unfair to you. Mostly on purpose. I do not regret my actions. However I have come to understand you as a person different from who I originally thought you were.” Mahanon tilts his head a little. “I wanted you to know that at the time I felt myself justified but I will not continue to act the same now. You are better than you are.”

Mahanon stops, hums to himself, and nods.

“Thank you.” Cullen says because he doesn’t quite know what to say - “To be fair to you, you were most likely correct in what you thought of me.”

“No.” Mahanon says, shaking his head. “You are better.”

Mahanon tilts his head to the other side and hums a few notes. Cullen wonders if that’s something he got from Ellana or vice versa.

“Thank you.” Mahanon says.

“For what?”

“For being better.” Mahanon replies. “Thank you for being better.”

Cullen blinks at him as Mahanon turns on his heel and walks away.

“I don’t know which one is harder to deal with.” Cassandra says, walking over to him from where she was attempting to fix up a training dummy. “This one cuts through everything and the other one is practically allergic to saying things straight out.”

She looks at the side of his face, hard enough that Cullen shifts a little.

“He’s right. You are better.” She says, reaching out and grasping his arm, squeezing hard enough to feel. “You are better.”


	21. Chapter 21

Summer, and Ellana closes her eyes to receive her vallaslin. The final step before she and Mahanon become initiates in the cult of the Twins. She closes her eyes to receive the lines that mark her Keeper of Secrets, and Mahanon sits with her, holding her hands lightly in his. It hurts, but it is an _exalting_ kind of hurt. The kind that makes her stomach and toes curl, the kind that make her breath flutter.  
  
Soon she thinks, as she closes her eyes to Mahanon's excitement and turns towards the Keeper.  
  
_Soon_.  
  
Autumn, and Mahanon races through leaves that smell like soil and decay, bow unstrung on his back and knives safe in their sheathes. Ellana races behind him in the shape of a doe, and he is her protector. No elf would shoot them - not with her marks, not with him with her. And no shemlen hunter will have her. Not while he is looking. And no creature of the forest would touch him. Not while she watches, not while her skin is ever shifting at his back. Mahanon whoops loud and long, a sound like the singing dogs of the clans to the west. Things are _changing_ , winter and they will pass into the cult of the Twins and become Secret Keepers for true and for ever. Soon.  
  
Soon, he thinks, as he closes his eyes and throws himself off the edge of a waterfall, trusting Ellana to follow after him.  
  
_Soon_.  
  
Winter, and Ellana closes her eyes against the blinding white of unfamiliar snow peaked mountains. Her heart feels severed, raw and bleeding out uselessly into the empty space where the rest of her should be. This is what it means to serve the people. The demands of the people. She closes her eyes and makes herself small, listens to the trample of templars on their march to their Temple of Sacred Ashes. It _hurts_. It is all cold and unfamiliar. She feels Falon'din's hand on the back of her neck, guiding her on. She wishes it were Mahanon.  
  
Soon, she thinks, as she closes her eyes and imagines her other face here, with her. Where he should be.  
  
_Soon_.  
  
Spring, and Mahanon curves his face to hers, lining up their foreheads and noses, their vallaslin and their eyelashes.  Her breath and his mingle, and their hands are mismatched. It is the end, they have made it. All that remains of who they once were lies underneath months and years of soil and seasons, beneath their bare feet. He holds her hand between his, stroking his thumbs over the lines he has memorized. It hurts. A bone deep hurt that will never go away. A sundering kind of hurt. They breathe in cool, moist air.  
  
Soon, Mahanon thinks, their eyes closed, the softest blush of their eyelashes tingling on their skins. Soon they will move on from here.  
  
_Soon_.  
  
-  
  
"Are you well?" Blackwall asks, and Mahanon squints up at him before grunting and turning over, slowly curling and burrowing himself deeper into a pile of hay. It probably would not go well if he were to bodily pick the boy up and bring him to a surgeon.  
  
It may in fact end up with Blackwall needing the surgeon himself.  
  
Blackwall throws one of the horse blankets over him, and is faintly surprised when Mahanon acknowledges this by making the soft sort of pleased noise Blackwall normally associates with pups. Mahanon curls the blanket around himself, sighs, and then mostly disappears from view, except for a few strands of light hair that somewhat blend into the hay.  
  
His sister is currently somewhere in the Hinterlands, doing Maker knows what. For whatever reason, Ellana or Mahanon declined to have him go along. He wonders if the boy is regretting that decision.  
  
They're somewhat codependent, according to the others.  
  
Blackwall's never seen someone who's codependent to the degree the others describe function so damned well.  
  
Blackwall goes back to moving things about the stables, arranging the tack, checking the feed and water, so on and such.  
  
Sometimes he feels eyes on him. He doesn't look.  
  
When Blackwall is done and considering whether he wants to seek out Cassandra for practice or go join in on drills with the troops, Mahanon chooses to speak.  
  
"Show me." Mahanon says and Blackwall turns to him. Mahanon's chin is over the edge of the blanket though the rest of him remains hidden. "Show me how you throw."  
  
Blackwall's eyes flick to the target he's got up on the wall.  
  
"I would think you know enough about throwing knives." Because he's seen the boy and he's no less accurate for rain or fog or even snow with the cover of night.  
  
"No." Mahanon says. "Yours are _different_. Show me."  
  
The boy isn't the same as his sister, but he does call her to mind sometimes.  
  
"As you wish, my lord." Blackwall says because if he's going to treat Ellana like a lady, he's going to extend the same courtesy to her twin.  
  
Mahanon wrinkles his nose and looks at Blackwall like he's insane, which is somewhat similar to what Ellana does. Though Ellana tends to look a little more excited by the idea of being called a lady than Mahanon does at being called a lord.  
  
But Mahanon throws the blanket off and lopes over to him, expectant and waiting like a baby bird that demands to be fed.  
  
Except this bird wants _knives_.  
  
Now that's an eerie image.  
  
-  
  
Cullen finds them on his way to chess with Dorian, or to be more accurate, he finds them when he arrives for chess with Dorian.  
  
Dorian is not yet present, sometimes he likes to arrive late as a sort of tactic. As if being late would put Cullen on edge or something. Cullen doesn't claim to know how Dorian's mind works.  
  
_Dorian_ probably doesn't know how Dorian's mind works half the time.  
  
The twins aren't seated, but crouched on either side of the chess board, their eyes and fingers just peering over the edge of the low table as they survey the battlefield, as it were.  
  
Cullen watches, amused as Mahanon slowly reaches up and prods at one of the pawns with the tip of his finger, nearly tipping it over before gently removing his finger and allowing it to settle back in place.  
  
Ellana watches this with her dark eyes, eyelashes slowly fluttering half open and half closed before she raises her hand and experimentally taps on one of the board's empty squares.  
  
Whatever sound they get must mean something because Mahanon and Ellana start mumbling at each other in earnest.  
  
Cullen steps in, careful to come in from an angle where Mahanon can see him. They both tilt their heads toward him at the same time without looking away from the board.  
  
"Having fun?" He asks, taking his seat behind the black pieces. Ellana and Mahanon both immediately move over towards him, still crouched; as if closing ranks against an unknown enemy.  
  
"This one." Mahanon says, pointing at a pawn. " _Why_?"  
  
"Explain please." Ellana says and Cullen takes that to mean that they want him to explain the rules of chess.  
  
So Cullen does, because if Dorian is going to be late as a stalling tactic he's going to go for the extreme and possibly be half an hour late. Anything more and Dorian probably was delayed by something real. Dorian wouldnt just not show up.  
  
Dorian is well aware that these games are a precious use of otherwise borrowed, stolen, cheated, and hoarded time.  
  
Cullen is in the middle of explaining how the knights move - he must be getting through because Mahanon actually looks _pleased_ and Ellana hasn't interrupted with a question in almost five minutes - when Dorian shows up, eyebrows raising at the sight.  
  
"My, my, aren't we cozy?" Dorian says, and Mahanon wrinkles his nose. Ellana beams up at him.  
  
Cullen automatically sets a hand on Mahanon's shoulder, and it's then that he realizes how close the two have moved towards him during his explanation. Both of their sides are against his legs and to his amazement Mahanon settles underneath his touch.  
  
Cullen is more surprised he didn't lose the hand, to be honest.  
  
"He explains things better than you." Mahanon says, pointing at the board.  
  
Dorian looks completely affronted.  
  
Ellana laughs.  
  
Cullen straightens up in his seat. "You're late."  
  
Dorian huffs and takes his own seat. Ellana moves to his side, resting her head on his knee for a moment before sitting down and resting her chin on the edge of the table.  
  
Mahanon mimics her, and their eyes flicker from Cullen to Dorian. Waiting and expectant.  
  
"Pushy, pushy." Dorian says, but leans forward to read the board. "I know better than to ask if you rearranged the pieces when I wasn't here. You're too good for that, but have you been poisoning their minds against me?"  
  
"I'm not too good for _that_?"  
  
"Hardly." Dorian snorts. "Who's turn was it? Yes, yes, we're about to actually play. No need to look at me like I'm being slow. The banter is part of the game, didn't the good Commander tell you that?"


	22. Chapter 22

“I’ve never heard him _coo_ before, this is disturbing. It upsets the balance of the world. You know, in that Ellana is the one that’s _nice_ and he’s the one that’s – murderous and unsettling.” Dorian waves a hand, “You know what I mean.”

“You’re reducing them to mere facets of themselves.”  Solas says, a slight downturn to his lips, “Just because they act one way with you doesn’t mean they act that way to everyone.”

“It’s just _unexpected_ is all.” Dorian sighs. “You wouldn’t expect him to coo just looking at him.”

Which is a point that even Solas has to concede. He does so with a graceful dip of his head.

“It would not be so unexpected, perhaps, if you knew the significance of their vallaslin.” Solas replies. And the original meaning may have been lost, but Solas knows what the Dalish think of them now. The nuances to them.

Dorian waits, expectant and Solas raises an eyebrow.

“I’m not one of your students, you can actually _give_ me the answer.” Dorian snorts.

“Should I?” Solas says. “I’m sure there’s a book on the so called Dalish gods around Skyhold.”

“None of them would actually be worth reading, I’m sure.” Dorian says.

“Point.” Solas says, “They are marked for the twins.”

“Appropriate.” Dorian nods, arms folding, face snapping into the expression he reserves for intense study and research. “There’s more to it than that, I’m sure.”

“There is.” Solas says, “There is much weight behind it. But the part in particular you should understand is that Mahanon wears the vallaslin for Falon’din. Friend, and guide, of the dead.”

“Morbid.”

“Falon’din, according to Dalish beliefs, guides the souls of the dead to the afterlife and freely walks between boundaries of the worlds. He is a friend. To the young he is kind and gentle, he knows what they have to lose. He knows how fresh their souls are, and so he is kind and soft to them. To the young and inexperienced, he is most careful and sensitive.”

Dorian hums, fingers tapping on his arms, eyes no longer focused on Solas as he considers things beyond their sight.

“I could explain more.” Solas says, because he’s certain the twins would appreciate having someone who understands even a little bit of their culture.

“Please do.” Dorian says, “Same time tomorrow?”

“When you get stuck on your futile research and come down to bother me? I wouldn’t miss it.”

-

Mahanon leans over the table, thin wisps of pale the long hair that have slipped out of his braid barely brushing against the table markers. Mahanon’s eyes are focused, unblinking as he examines the map.

They wait, Cullen explaining his opinion and his understanding of the current issue of territory at hand and how he thinks it would best be remedied.

Mahanon’s mouth turns downward and his fingers curl around the edge of the table, the veins and tendons of his forearms pressing against his skin as he stretches.

“March.” Mahanon says, when Cullen finishes, then sighs. “No. That would be simplest. We are not yet full enough to deny the hands extended to us.”

Mahanon tilts his head and considers.

“He is – as you say, Josephine, insignificant in the larger scheme?”

“Yes, sir Lavellan.”

Mahanon wrinkles his nose a little at the title and shrugs as if he’s trying to shake off a weight.

“And there are no true repercussions for ignoring his blathering?”

“None. Not even his fellow nobles consider him as much of anything.” Josephine says. “There is no one at his back.”

“And no one would _join_ him if we were to refuse him?”

“None.”

Mahanon hums, a low and steady note that’s more of a buzz than a sound.

“We could _send_ soldiers. But they do not necessarily have to help _him_.” Mahanon muses. “He cannot complain because we _did_ send people, as he requested.”

Cullen and Leliana both look pleased by this as Josephine places one of the military markers on the map over Kildarn’s estate.

“As you suggest, Herald.’

Mahanon wrinkles his nose again and does another shudder before releasing the table, sweeping hair out of his face as he straightens.

“What next?” Mahanon asks, eyes fixing on Josephine.

“At the moment our forces are working on all they can, there are more localized problems we could sort out. But nothing we need to send out for, necessarily.” Leliana answers. “Thank you for your help, Mahanon.”

Mahanon shrugs, and turns on his heel and walks out of the room, door gently closing behind him.

They wait a beat.

“That went faster than normal.” Cullen says. “He’s an – intense man, isn’t he?”

“Do you think we could convince Ellana to bring Mahanon along or send him in her place every time?” Leliana muses. “It goes so much faster when he’s here for some reason.”

“Let’s hope it isn’t insulting.” Josephine says. “Though I think she’d be relieved, to be honest. She’s much better at dealing with things in person than on paper.”

-

“You shouldn’t believe everything people tell you.” Mahanon says, bumping his shoulder against Cole and ducking his head to peer at Cole’s face underneath the brim. “Hello, Cole. Have you helped many people today?”

“I think so, yes. So many little thing smoothed over. Like folded edges of paper, small little seams.” Cole says, blinking his watery eyes at Mahanon. “Hello, Mahanon. You are very close.”

Mahanon tilts his head, hums and moves away. “How do you see things with this hat and that hair, Cole? You need a haircut.”

“You have more hair than I do.”

“Notice how none of it is in my face, however. You shouldn’t believe everything people tell you.” Mahanon repeats. “Just because someone _says_ something will make them feel better doesn’t mean they mean it.”

“I know that.” Cole says, “I can feel them when they lie. They think it will help them but they know, deep down, it won’t. They just want it to happen so someone will hurt as much as they do. They want other people to hurt with them that way it won’t be so bitter in their mouths when they take a breath and move on.”

Mahanon hums. “Good.”

“It’s _not_ good.” Cole bristles and Mahanon bumps him again with his shoulder. “Oh, you meant it is good that I know that. Yes. It is good. Thank you for asking. Not many people want to know about how I help people. Not many people want to help me, either.”

Mahanon shrugs. “You are good.”

Mahanon holds out his hand and Cole takes it. “Let us go.”

“Alright. Where are we going?”

“To find more hurt.” Mahanon says, slipping off the wall and pulling Cole along with him. “Or to possibly cause it for those who deserve it.”

“Knives flashing in the dark. A group of hunters – a pack of wolves, a pride of lions, descending on the deserving like a murder of crows. You miss it. Flash of steel, smiles in the dark, the shapes of bodies in leaves and trees. You do not hunt alone. No, you don’t. I will be pack with you. We can both protect your clan. Yes.”

Mahanon hums and squeezes Cole’s hand before letting go. But his hands are warm. They are happy.

He missed the company of quiet knives.


	23. Chapter 23

“They say that the one who wins is the one you feed.” Mahanon says, and he purposefully opens his hand to her. She glances at the small bag of seeds. “I choose you. Of that which makes the being known as us, I choose you.”

Ellana shakes her head, mute, as she pushes his hand towards himself. Her stomach aches. Her mouth is dry.

“Survive.” She says because there is no world without Mahanon and she knows he feels the same way about her. “You are what is needed.”

Ellana may be magic and lore, she may be gentle things and renewing spring but they don’t need spring right now. They need the edge of ice, the burning lungs before the first breath. They need Mahanon. Hard-handed Mahanon who knows how to carve an existence out of stone, how to survive through storms, and forge through death with nothing but his own will.

She pushes herself close and rests her head on his shoulder.

“I choose you.” She says, because she isn’t a fool. She knows how she will make it through this winter. If Mahanon is strong he can hunt. He can defend. Mahanon is her chance, their clan’s chance. “Eat. Tend your bow. Sharpen your knife. The winter wind beckons you to join its hunt.”

Mahanon rests his cheek on her head, the sharp bones of his face uncomfortable on her head.

They are both weakened but neither are weak.

Mahanon’s hand is cold and thin on her knee when he squeezes and slowly pushes himself up.

“I will return.” Mahanon replies.

“Like everything spring.” Ellana answers. “Dareth shiral.”

-

He stared hard at the table as he tried to recall his attacker, and began describing something that sounded particularly like a ram.

Mahanon turns away from the scout and gives Ellana a _look_.

“I told you that boy was off.” Mahanon signs to her with his left hand, hidden underneath his folded arms. Ellana sighs and shrugs. Mahanon clicks his tongue and mutters underneath his breath, “ _Lord Woolsley.”_

“Stay away from rams for a while.” Ellana says, laying a comforting hand on the scout’s shoulder. It isn’t the hand with the anchor, but the scout’s eyes are bulging out of his face and he looks like he’s about to shit himself.

Mahanon barely refrains from commenting. He thinks that he should get credit for that.

Ellana is unimpressed and walks away to the shallow pools of water. He follows. Always.

“It’s a demon.” Mahanon says.

“How was I supposed to know?” Ellana frowns.

“The boy said it _talked_ and brought _good fortune_ by _guiding their family’s interests_.” Mahanon says.

“I thought he was making it up! Like the small ones in our clan!”

Mahanon eyes her out of the corner of his vision. “He’s too old for imaginary friends.”

“Some don’t grow out of it.” Ellana mutters, “Excuse me for not immediately jumping to _it’s a demon_.”

“We’re killing it.” Mahanon says.

“He’s going to be so disappointed.” Ellana frowns.

“He’ll be more disappointed when it destroys his entire family.” Mahanon replies, “He’ll get over it. Or – we could just never find it.”

“I dislike lying.”

“It’s not a lie if we just don’t say anything.” Mahanon reminds her and Ellana’s shoulders dip in acknowledgement. “It’s not like we can just let it go about the countryside killing shems. That seems bad for this _Inquisition’s_ reputation.”

“It could go home eventually. Maybe it’s a nice spirit?”

“Demon. It’s a demon.”

“Who didn’t like being shot at?”

Mahanon tugs one of her braids and Ellana sighs.

“Alright. Alright, we’ll kill the ram.”

-

“Spare some change, please?”

Mahanon keeps walking, and Ellana hesitates before following after him.

“What is change?” She whispers to him, before turning back to Varric, “Varric what is change?”

Varric looks to Solas - “Economics isn’t my forte, merchant prince.”

“It’s coin.” Varric says, “Spare coin.”

“Spare some spare coin?” Mahanon says, “That sounds redundant. Spare coin? Coin cannot be spare. Coin is metal. It does not eat therefore it does not starve.”

“Unnecessary coin, basically.” Varric says, “Coin you aren’t using.”

“You don’t _use_ coin, you _have_ coin.” Ellana frowns, tangling her hand into Mahanon’s braid and gently pulling him back so she’s walking right behind him. “And no coin is unnecessary. Well, not in your strange system. I think coin is unnecessary. Gold is so useless most of the time, why is it worth the most?”

“I’m not equipped for this.” Varric says. “Maybe you should ask Josephine.”

“But Josephine isn’t _here_.” Mahanon points out. “Why is that? Is this not some sort of diplomatic outreach attempt to your Chantry? She’s good at that sort of thing.”

“Josephine has other matters to attend to.” Cassandra says, “There, ahead. Varric can explain money to you later. In the mean time we have other things to sort out.”

-

“I’ve never seen so many homeless people in one place before.” Dorian says and turns in time to see Mahanon’s smile quickly replace itself with its normal neutral to vaguely irritated position. “Oh go ahead and say it. I know you want to.”

Mahanon looks up at the sky and hums, hands behind his back as he walks off.

“Insufferable. I am surrounded in insufferable _asses_.”

“Takes one to know one.” Varric says, “Besides, you could always leave.”

“And make myself a quitter? That’s letting the evil blighted Magisters _win_ , Varric. I am not going to let them _win_.” Dorian waves his hand, “Dorian Pavus does not just _give up_.”

“Well, the refugees had to go somewhere.” Blackwall says, coming back from talking to whoever was in charge. Mahanon had been suspiciously absent when they first arrived and only came back a few moments ago.

A glance around proves he’s disappeared, yet again.

“We’re going to be sorting them out to go elsewhere. They can’t stay here. It’s not defensible and supplies can’t get here often enough and in enough quantity to be any good.” Blackwall says. “I hope you’re ready to be personable, Tevinter.”

“I am always personable.”

“Not when you first wake up.” Mahanon says from _directly behind him_ and Dorian does not set the man on fire. “You have terrible bed head.”

“Could you _not_.” Dorian says and Mahanon glides past him, shrugging his shoulders.

“You make it too easy.” Mahanon replies.


	24. Chapter 24

“Don’t.” He says, taking her hand in his, and she recognizes the panic in his eyes because it is _her_ panic, as well.

“It is this hand that he seeks.” She says, looking at her other hand, “He will not harm them, Mahanon. They are not our clan, this is not our hearth, but they are our responsibility.”

“Because of that.” He hisses, voice crackling as he pulls her towards himself. “ _Please. Do not ask this of us. No one asks this of us.”_

“No. No one asks because I have chosen.” She says, “I know this is the way. You knew since the second those doors closed that this was the way.”

She looks at him, her face, her self.

“Mahanon, we have to protect them. I must go so that he is distracted. _You_ must go to lead them. Who among them is more experienced surviving the bitter cold while hunted than you? Who among them is the best at traversing harsh and unfamiliar territory with ease? Mahanon, who was it that survived those winters? Who was it that helped defend and feed the starving clan? Who was the eyes and sharp ears that guided the clan around traps and dangers? Mahanon.”

“Don’t die. Falon’din will not have you. I will fight him myself.” Mahanon says. “Return. I cannot lead them as I am.”

“Yes.” Ellana says, and he lets go of her hand in order for their fingers to become one. “I will always come back to myself, the wheel will always spin, and the music must play. _Go_.”

“Go.”

They let go. Their fingers feel like velvet even in the cold.

Ellana does not look back when she runs out the Chantry doors. Her hand fists around the green light of the anchor.

Mahanon watches her go and turns to follow the frightened people.

“You can still go with her if you want.” The Commander says. Because they both know that she will die.

Mahanon will die.

The being that makes _them_ will die.

(He could go, turn right now and join her. They could die _whole_. Together. A privilege that those of their kind so rarely get. To die with all of their soul at once.)

“This is my choice.” Mahanon says, because deep down he knows that this is what he must do. He may want to rejoin his other face, his soul. He may want it with everything in him. But it is not what must be done.

This _Inquisition_ chooses them as their _beacon_. Their _mascot_. This Inquisition chooses him. They choose back in return.

They have chosen that the Inquisition will live another day.

Mahanon would love to be selfish and choose himself. But he cannot. There will be time for pain and anger and tears and rage at the unfairness of it all later.

They have been together for such a short time in this lifetime.

Will she return to his side when he is still in this form? Will their time be pushed out of synch?

“The wheel turns, Commander. The music plays. The world sleeps and wakes. We march. We suffer. We endure.” Mahanon says.

The Inquisition will not fall today. Not if Mahanon has anything to say about it.

-

“What are you?” He says, suspicion and hurt and caution and pain laced together tight. A braid made for hanging. Is it murder if you do it in self defense? It can’t be. It doesn’t matter if it is. _I am right, I am the protecting hand, the knife that smiles moonlight and stars into the sky. I am the dark that makes the knife, that makes the jagged edge -_

I cannot say _Compassion_ and I cannot say _Cole_.

He doesn’t think that humans have compassion, the word does not apply to them. Why would Compassion take on the form of a human? He doesn’t understand compassion, either. He knows weakness, he knows pity, he knows pragmatism. He understands and readily accepts all of those. Even arrogance can take their shape.

A man, a man in robes tosses out money and bread and he smiles because he thinks he’s _so good_. He’s doing them all a favor, they must love him, adore him, in return. Surely they are grateful to their savior, indebted, devoted, demeaned -

Grovel. Adore me, praise me -

No. They don’t know when I help them. I don’t want them to know.

I cannot say Cole because neither of us know who Cole is.

I search his memory for a word, a name, a thing that he will understand.

His hand tightens around the knife and I have my own knives. Our knives are similar. They are the flashing walls that fight back. Defend, destroy, demark the lines of safety.

The other one who has his face inside of her trusts me more. They are both distrustful, but I say that I am compassion and she understands and reaches out for me. She smiles.

Warm, a caress. Gentle. Saying everything she needs to in a single gesture. I understand.

Her lips, soft and small against the side of his face, a brush. Eyelashes flutter. Completeness. I am _me,_ again. Now.

It hurts and the edges bleed, sundered, but she is there, and the edges meld together, coming together, an image being painted. Becoming myself. The hurts fall away. I am not alone. Together we handle the things we could not handle before. Making things better. The wound slowly closes, the bruise fades eventually. Time. Together.

I understand how to tell him.

“I am a kiss.” I tell him, and he looks at me, surprise and incredulous, angry and confused.

I reach out with my fingers, slowly. And I touch the place where she kisses him most, the side of his jaw, right there, where his blood sings. Gentle, softly. Barely a touch. A kiss.

“I am a kiss.” I repeat. And in him images of his face within her rise to the surface. Warm air through cold. Understanding in his eyes. Anger at first, but that fades quickly. Understanding, slow and tentative – thin like the skin between fingers – trust building. A scab over a scratch.

The wink of metal is replaced by the glitter of teeth. A sliver.

“A kiss.” He says, like he’s sighing and he reaches out his hand, dagger whisked away into shadow to touch my neck. His fingers are warm, and firm when they press against the place lips are meant to be. “Cole. Be welcome in my shadow.”

“Yes.” I say, and he brushes his thumb against my jaw, his version of a kiss and slips away. To rejoin his face. I, too, slip away, to rejoin the  little hurts that need helping.

This is was not a hurt but it could have been one.

I will not hurt you. I do not mean to if I do.

I understand. I will teach you how to not hurt my face.

I would like that. Please. There is so much I do not know about hurt. I try but I don’t always get it right. How am I to get it right?

People don’t always know what they want. They don’t always know what’s hurting them. I will teach you. My face, and I.

Yes. I want to learn.

Good.


	25. Chapter 25

Blackwall realizes that Lavellan – the boy – has seen him and he actually cannot allow him to get away now that he has. Mahanon seems to realize this at the same time because he breaks into a dead sprint and Blackwall has to go after him.

The boy runs fast and is good at weaving through and around obstacles without slowing or stopping, Blackwall gives him that. And he doubts he would be able to catch Mahanon at any other time, except as Mahanon is about to fling his way up a wall – Blackwall doesn’t know anyone in the world aside from this boy and his sister who are capable of _scaling walls with their bare hands_  – an arm shoots out and grabs him by the back of the neck.

Mahanon yelps and flails, and Blackwall slows to a walk now that he knows he isn’t getting away.

As he recalls, the woman’s name is Herah of the Qunari mercenary group Josephine invited to visit Skyhold.

She looks amused as she watches the boy dangle from her one handed grip. Mahanon looks torn between awestruck – something Blackwall finds surprisingly _adorable_  – and thunderous at being caught.

“Any particular reason why you were chasing half of your Inquisitor?” Herah asks, effortlessly holding Mahanon up as if he were a brace of hares she had caught, or fish.

“Secrets.” Blackwall answers. “He saw something he shouldn’t have and now we have to talk it over like adults do. Yes, that does mean you have to say things with your mouth.”

Mahanon bares his teeth and hisses.

“In words.”  Blackwall tags on. “Mind your manners.”

Mahanon’s eyes flick from Blackwall to Herah before he clicks his tongue and goes limp.

“Should I be concerned?” Herah gently sets Mahanon on his feet anyway, though she doesn’t let go of him. Smart. Sometimes he fakes surrender so he can keep running. Cullen learned that the hard way.

“Just going to talk. You could come along if you’d like.”

Herah raises an eyebrow and Blackwall points his thumb at the barn.

“You keep your secrets in the barn?” She asks, moving her hand from the back of Mahanon’s neck to around his shoulders, effectively pinning him to her side as she takes smaller steps to keep pace with the shorter elf.

“No one of import ever goes into the barn.” Blackwall says, “Except the Inquisitors.”

“I’m never going into the barn again.” Mahanon mumbles.

“Unlikely, you’d miss being able to sleep in the hay.” Blackwall says. “Since the servants keep cleaning the hay you bring up out of your room.”

-

“You’re three years older?” Josephine asks and Mahanon nods as he slowly continues to copy out the letter Josephine asked him to draft. “Do you – you’re just so close. Do you remember what it was like before her?”

Mahanon doesn’t answer and Josephine hopes this doesn’t mean she’s upset him.

Mahanon and Lavellan are upset and pacified by the strangest things. She’s never quite sure where she stands with either of them.

“No.” Mahanon answers, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he copies the word _sovereign_. Mahanon has trouble with the letter _g_. “I am told that I was born in an alienage, I don’t remember it.”

Mahanon shrugs, turns the paper and manages to complete the letter _g_ and connecting it to the letter _n_ fluidly. He hums in satisfaction.

“I am also told that times were hard. I also don’t remember that.” Mahanon shrugs again, “It isn’t important, so I don’t.”

Mahanon waves his hand as if brushing away a moth or a fly.

“Whatever I was before her is insignificant to me. Because now I am the myself I was always meant to become, and I am becoming the self I will always be meant for. Before her I was unshaped clay waiting. Now I go through many hands and fires and am made. The pot doesn’t care where its clay comes from, only that it is being made and will be used.”

Mahanon holds the paper up to the light and squints. He holds the paper out to her and points at the word _dignity_.

“What’s this one?” He asks.

“Dignity.” She reads out loud.

“Oh.” He replies, “Can we change that word?”

“You’d have to rewrite the sentence, I’m afraid.”

Mahanon wrinkles his nose and goes back to trying to write the word.

“Why can’t Ellana do this?” He asks, “She _likes_ writing and drawing and things.”

“The Lady Inquisitor is in a fitting. Sadly, you two can’t swap places for that.”

Mahanon makes a face at the paper, “I wouldn’t want to.”

Josephine figured as much.

-

It was the trip of a lifetime – going through time, seeing the future, _understanding the consequences of their actions_  – and yet Ellana -

To be here, where she belongs, with him – herself – it’s -

It’s so much more important.

She squeezes his hand in hers hard enough that he flinches a little but he doesn’t let go, he squeezes back.

She wonders about her self in that future. Did they die together? Where they apart? Did one live much longer than the other?

 _Don’t take him from me_ , Ellana thinks as she quietly just – just basks in the knowledge that he’s with her. That her life has not ended, that her existence remains whole and solid and steady.

They sit together far from Haven, their backs to the shem village that they’ve been forced to call their hearth, the light of the Breach shining on the snow in an eerie green-white glow that almost hurts their eyes.

“I was so afraid.” Mahanon says, voice cracking with shame. “I couldn’t – I just couldn’t.”

“I hurt.” Ellana replies, hand raised to her chest. “I _hurt_.”

Mahanon bites his wrist and lowers his head to press against his knees.

Ellana curls closer to him because he has always been the more sensitive of them when it comes to things like this. Mahanon can handle any slew of insults and hurts from the world. But even the slightest nudge of their heart can send him stumbling and falling. Mahanon’s emotions linger with him. They are so powerful, so strong.

Ellana worries about him so much.

His emotions sway him so powerfully.

She kisses his shoulder, the tip of his ear, every part of him that she can reach.

“I’m here. You’re here. We are alive. And we can stop that from happening.” She says, resting her forehead against the side of his head, she closes her eyes and the red and black on the backs of them remind her of the future that must never be. “We must.”

Mahanon swallows. “Do not go where I cannot follow. Do not leave me behind to endure when you leave to the arms of the fallen.”

“I can’t promise that.” Ellana whispers. “And you know you can’t promise that to me, either.”

 _I wish_ , they both think. _I wish_.

“You are my face.” She repeats to him, and Mahanon nods. “I would not hurt myself willingly.”

“I hurt.” Mahanon whispers.

“I was so afraid.” She whispers back. “But we must.”

 


End file.
